


Heavy Metal

by GSKashmir



Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: Angst, Bismuth Redemption, Bismuth and Steven save the world with the power of rock, Connie is not in a good place, Corruption, Curing Corruption, Djent, Everybody Redemption, F/F, Greg is dead, Heavy Metal, Hurt/Comfort, Jasper Redemption, Maybe more gay later, Music, Ok lets be honest its gonna get gay, Older Connie, Post-Apocalypse, Rebuilding, We lost the war, older steven, some gay, time skip
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-01-31
Updated: 2017-09-14
Packaged: 2018-09-21 05:22:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 23,317
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9533618
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GSKashmir/pseuds/GSKashmir
Summary: Bismuth reforms a decade after she was bubbled for the second time to find that all of her old friends are corrupted, turned into monsters.  It doesn't help that the person she learns this from ran her through with a large sword last time they spoke.  But there are bigger problems.  The Earth is safe from Homeworld at last, but at what cost?The world is a large, inhospitable wasteland with gem monsters roaming around at every turn.  The humans that survived have gone into hiding in their own settlements, but Steven has been cast out because of his gem.  Alone, he discovers that gem forms respond to music and thinks he might be able to get his family back from the monsters they turned into.  As strong as he is, however, he can't save everyone on his own.  One kind of metal just isn't enough.With a shaky alliance and a few blatant threats, the last two crystal gems still in one piece on Earth finally get down to Bismuth.





	1. Ain't No Grave

**Author's Note:**

> After shaking off the cobwebs and getting a few beta readers, I'm finally ready to write this. I often thought that corruption could be helped through music, considering it's described as a song. And after binging Mad Max movies and playing through Brütal Legend again, this idea hit me like a freight train. It's not the most traditional kind of Steven Universe fic setting, but I got enough encouragement to give it a go. This is gonna be a long one, chapters won't be frequent because they'll be beta read multiple times through multiple edits before I'm happy with them. Also for this particular chapter, I was listening to Johnny Cash's "Ain't No Grave." I felt it appropriate for Bismuth's reformation here. There's not much more to say, really. Without further ado, I present to you, "Heavy Metal."

“Then you really are better than her…”

 

They were the last words Bismuth remembered saying before Rose Quartz’s sword destabilized her form. As far as she knew, that was it for her. Nothingness for eternity. And she figured that she was fine with that. No more traitorous Rose Quartz, no more of that little kid who she turned into, no more secrets and lies. It was for the best. Even if Bismuth wanted to try and force The Breaking Point onto the Crystal Gems, they would cast her out. If the only weapons she wanted to make to fight Homeworld were the kind that shattered, the kind that killed, then they didn't have much use for her on the team.  
Useless…

 

The word repeated over and over in her head. She usually wasn't one for self-pity, but this was a special circumstance. After all, it was just her and her thoughts until the end of time. But slowly, pride started forming. She was poofed for something she believed in, a grand idea that nobody could pry from her. Bismuth was proud that she went down swinging for,what she believed was right. She was so proud, that, when she poofed, she hoped The Breaking Point fell on Steven’s foot and and broke his toes. Were she able to, she would be smiling right now. No matter what eternity had in store for her, she could always take solace in that thought.

 

But then, that in and of itself was a problem. As nice a thought as it was, there was the glaring issue in that bubbled gems are not supposed to be able to have thoughts at all.They’ve no consciousness. And Bismuth was bubbled before for thousands of years, so she knew what that felt like. So how could she think? Why did she have some form of wits about her? Unless of course…

 

She wasn't bubbled at all…

 

OoOoOoOoO

 

Steven Quartz Universe was sitting in a rocking chair, plucking the strings of a heavily modified version of his father’s Jader brand electric guitar. Instead of the usual six strings, it had been given a much thicker neck and an additional three lower strings. The pickups, bridge, and headstock were all modified to compensate for these adjustments. 

 

The guitar was plugged into various pedals that rested in front of Steven’s feet on the dusty, wooden floorboards, and the output from those pedals were plugged into a pile of metal and wires that all fed into one of his shields, concave side facing outward. But no sound was coming from it. In fact, the only sounds that could be heard were the creaking wood of the chair, the twanging of an E pentatonic scale being played on an electric guitar with the volume turned all the way down, the soft pattering of steady rain coming down on the wooden roof, and a rather large gem slowly beginning to reform.

 

Bismuth reformed looking much the same as she did before the incident with the breaking point, tattoos and all. She was hunched over on the ground, trying to get her bearings before she tried anything. Slowly but surely, she rose to her feet and looked at her surroundings.

 

She was in some kind of wooden structure that was covered with boxes made of glass and metal. If her memory served correctly, these were the same as the “teevie” she watched with Steven before her second bubbling. They appeared to be functioning, but the only image on them was a green, rounded triangle that flickered on and off, nothing like the “moovy” that she and the gems watched.

 

In addition, she saw various piles of what appeared to be garbage. Some of the piles were just heaps of trash without much to them, but others, like a glove and wooden club hanging from a coat hanger and a group of several broken toilets, had a much more deliberate placement to them, as if they had some meaning.

 

The roof above her seemed to be dripping slightly, but all of the droplets were falling into several buckets that were only half full. She noticed, however, that there used to be very large holes in the wooden ceiling, but were covered haphazardly with pieces of sheet metal. Not the best kind of roofing by any means, but it would work in a pinch.

 

As she continued making observations, she noticed that the large, wooden double doors that lead in and out of the structure were barricaded by a large girder that stretched almost the entire length of this domicile. At least, she was pretty sure it was a domicile. She saw a bed, a couch, even some musical instruments that hung from the wall. But her eyes caught something that left a bad taste in her mouth; a single pink shirt with a yellow star on it. It was well worn, torn and stained in various different spots. She knew that shirt. She knew who this place belonged to.

 

“Rise and shine, Bismuth. A decade is a long time to be asleep. Well, maybe not for gems, but, well, you know how Earth is...”

 

Bismuth quickly turned around with a sharp inhale as soon as the first word left Steven’s mouth. But she was confused at the sight that greeted her. This wasn't the boy she remembered. Surely it had to be, he had the Rose Quartz stone, after all. It was displayed prominently through a hole that had been cut in a black, sleeveless T-shirt with the same yellow star that was on the pink shirt. But he looked so much different. He had thick, black 5 o’clock shadow on his face that seemed to stop deliberately right before his neck, not quite reaching his throat. His hair was much longer than Bismuth remembered, and it turned into black and pink ringlets the further down it got. He was also much, much taller, Bismuth could tell even though he was sitting down.

 

Steven didn't bother looking up from his 9-string, he just kept noodling around, up and down scales. This was enough to unnerve Bismuth, however. Steven, Rose Quartz, whatever he might be, ran her through with a rather large pink sword last time they met. That’s not exactly something one would forget any time soon, and Bismuth certainly wasn't one who forgave so quickly. Without thinking about it, her hand shapeshifted into a large mallet. She took a few quick breaths before she charged at the young man who sat before her.

Before she was able to actually bludgeon his skull in, Steven, in one swift movement, brought his boot covered right foot down on one of the pedals before him and slammed out an extremely low C#5 chord. The sound came blasting out of his shield that sat next to him, pointing directly at where Bismuth was standing. The note reverberated throughout the place, and Bismuth was tossed backward as if she were nothing. This was unlike anything she had ever experienced, even back on Homeworld. Even a gem as strong as Garnet would never be powerful enough to do something like this. The panic began setting in, and it only worsened from there, as all of a sudden, she began losing her form. She tried desperately to hold out, but it only stopped once Steven pressed his foot on the same pedal again. Bismuth collapsed as the white light emanating from her stopped, and her usual form became solid once again. The low rumble from the shield had ceased, and Steven went right back to doing his twangy scale runs, rocking back and forth on the rickety chair, its creaks being heard loud and clear among everything else. Bismuth sat up and stared at him, seeing his content, comfortable looking face. He wasn’t even alert. He had something big up his sleeve, as Bismuth just experienced, and he was well aware that it gave him a rather large advantage.

 

“Steven… What in the stars was that…?” She asked, after a few seconds of silence on her part. The mention of his name got him to stop playing his guitar, if only for a moment. The silence that came with that action was louder than anything else up to that point. Though it wasn’t quite as powerful as when Steven finally answered.

 

“The last resort.”

 

Though she wasn't going to show it, Bismuth was afraid.

 

After a few seconds of silence, Steven began rocking in his chair and playing again. And with his barely audible music, he also began to talk.

 

“You’re wondering why I let you out.” He punctuated this sentence with an Emaj7 chord before continuing down another scale run.

 

Bismuth finally found her voice again and replied. “Uhh… Among other things, yeah. Where are we? Where is everyone else? What's with all the screens and green triangles? Why is it so humid? Oh, and most importantly, I’d appreciate it if you elaborated a bit more on whatever that noise was that threw me to the ground like a ragdoll.”

 

A giggle came from Steven. Not one of the cute, small ones he used to have, but a grizzled, almost spiteful laugh. When he stopped, he was quiet for a moment before replying back to the gray gem.

 

“Tell you what. I’ll answer some of those first, and you can figure out the answer to the big one afterward.”

 

Bismuth nodded, unsure as she was, and Steven began to tell the story.

 

“Couple years ago, Homeworld decided they were done playing games. Our numbers were larger than they were previously, but we had a small militia, they had enough soldiers and starships to blow the Earth into smithereens. Now, lucky for us, Blue Diamond and Yellow Diamond were having their own little spat which led to a second rebellion happening. See, Blue actually grew fond of our little ball of dirt. Especially the people who lived on it. I saw through her own eyes a few times, she learned that we could feel and empathize with her, we all knew what loss was like. She started seeing things the Rose Quartz way, she wanted the Earth to be left alone.” He clicked his tongue once before continuing, “Yellow didn't exactly see things her way. 

 

“The ensuing battle between their armies was incredible, Blue actually enlisted the help of The Crystal Gems on a few occasions, which led to a lot of defecting from both Blue and Yellow Diamond’s armies. We laid low when we could, but we were never completely safe.

 

“It all came to a head when Yellow Diamond was shattered. Before you get your undies in a twist, we weren't involved, that was all Blue. But when you shatter a diamond, bad things happen. And that particular bad thing was White Diamond.”

 

Steven stopped playing and took a deep breath before continuing his story, giving his hands a rest. Aside from Steven’s voice, Bismuth could only hear the steady rain and thunder from outside.

 

“White Diamond thought what Blue did was unforgivable. She took whatever forces were still loyal to Homeworld back home with her, and left everyone else, Blue Diamond included, exiled on Earth. We had about two seconds to celebrate before I heard the song.”

 

Bismuth looked confused. Steven, perceptive as he was, picked up on it and sighed, looking up at the ceiling and rolling his eyes.

 

“Oh come on, Bismuth, you know the one. Homeworld’s number one hit single, coming back onto the charts after an absence of thousands of years, ‘Corruption’ by White Diamond! You know, it was written by the diamonds just for the Crystal Gems! Their present to Earth! It’s a bit tacky to give someone the same thing twice, but it’s the thought that counts! Not really my thing though, I have to say. The diamonds seem to like the classics, but I’ll stick to my rock ‘n roll, thanks, it’s a lot less… what's the word... Torturous! That's it!”

 

Steven began laughing again, clearly pained, and it just made Bismuth more uneasy. She looked like she was ready to bolt. Steven, seeing this, let out a sigh.

 

“Tell me, Bismuth, you ever see all your friends turn into hideous monsters right before your very eyes? Because it’s not a pretty sight. I saved one gem, Bismuth, one. And she’s not even able to reform anymore.”

 

Steven stared at Bismuth with a strange, desperate look on his face. But he couldn't start crying, not now. He couldn't show weakness. Not wanting to scare her any more than he felt he had to, took a moment to regain his composure. During the silence, Bismuth spoke up.

 

“So you’re the last Crystal Gem standing… Because you're not a full gem, the corruption, it didn't turn you…”

 

Steven stared at her, but didn't say anything. Bismuth continued.

 

“Pearl, Garnet, the short Amethyst, they're all gone…” she sighed, letting out a very long breath. “I'm sorry…”

 

“Yeah…” Steven said, his breath hitching. “I'm sorry too… But they're not gone. Not yet, anyway. And that's where you come in.”

 

Bismuth raised an eyebrow. What would Steven need her for? If he had the key to curing corruption, Bismuth could only do so much. But she decided to hear him out. “Ok, shortstuff, I'm listening.”

 

Steven heaved a sigh and the twanging started up again. “So,” he began, “Corruption starts with a song. I heard it with my own ears, I can even play a reasonable cover of it. But I keep thinking that maybe I can reverse it… Peridot helped me figure something out that turned my shield into a sort of speaker cone, a resonator, and it does… Really cool stuff. I can dissipate forms if I play just the right notes to resonate at the right frequency of a gem. S’why my dad’s guitar has more strings now. But I can only do so much, Bismuth. I'm strong, sure, but you're stronger. And if I recall, you can build things, great things. And that's just the kind of gem that we need to start saving the Earth.”

Bismuth held her hands up. “Whoa whoa, Peridot? I thought you and I were the only gems left on Earth that haven’t uh… Y’know, lost ‘emselves…”

Steven smiled a bit. “I told you I saved one. She might not be able to reform, but that doesn’t mean she’s not still here.” He stopped playing for a moment and cupped his hands around his mouth. “Peridot!” All of a sudden, every screen displayed a large green exclamation point.

Bismuth looked confused, but Steven was quick to notice and explained. “So you might remember how Homeworld would put gems on certain objects to power them, right? Well, Peridot got poofed and didn’t come back. I waited months, and there was nothing. I tried my healing spit and everything, and she just never came back out. She’d later tell me it’s because she’s an Era 2 gem, but I give her more credit than that. Anyway, not long ago, I got the idea to wire her up to a PC motherboard, and now we have this situation. She… She is actually the one who told me to unbubble you.”

As the words came out of Steven’s mouth, the screens started displaying a smiley face emote made up of a colon and a right parenthesis.

“And so far,” Steven said, projecting his voice so Peridot would better hear him, “it hasn’t been a total disaster.”

The screens quickly changed over to the words, “WOW THANKS” followed immediately by “SARCASM” which caused Steven to chuckle. Bismuth didn’t laugh, but she did smile slightly. Things were coming together, she could make sense of this. But she still had a few questions about Peridot.

“Ok, so you put her in a computer… Like your friend’s uhm…” she struggled to think of the word, but snapped her fingers when it came to her. “Laptop, right? I remember you mentioning something about it before we… Well, you remember… Anyway, why doesn’t she have a voice? How come it’s all just text?”

Steven frowned, and so did the screens, displaying “:(“ in a bright, lime green.

“We tried speakers once… All that came out was a garbled mess whenever she tried to form a sentence. It’s only been a few weeks since we got all of this working anyway, so we both think that maybe she has to work a bit harder at projecting the things she wants to say as some sort of data. At the current moment, any time we aren’t talking, she spends her time practicing some kind of voice modulation. Occasionally, I wonder if putting an actual operating system onto a hard-drive for her would help, but we’re both afraid to make things worse. So for now, she spends most of the day figuring out speech, and at the end of the day, we give it a go. She’s getting better every day, to be perfectly honest.”

The screens all flashed “WOW THANKS” followed by “NOT SARCASM” which garnered a chuckle from both Steven and Bismuth this time.

There was a short silence afterward, while Bismuth was taking everything in. Eventually, Steven spoke up again.

 

“We need to get Pearl. Pearl has as much technical know-how as Peridot, and she could fix Dad’s van, fix Andy’s plane, with enough parts she could even make some sort of robot body for Peridot.”

 

The screens started flashing brightly, displaying “AMETHYST FIRST” repeatedly. Steven smacked his forehead and let out a long groan.

 

“Peridot, Amethyst is on the shortlist of ‘gems to save,’ but unless we can get the van working again, we can't exactly get to the Prime Kindergarten, can we?! It’s not like you have any more robonoids to repair the warp pad over there! So we save Pearl, Pearl can fix the van, and then we can go find Amethyst. We’ve been over this dozens of times!” He punctuated his last sentence by throwing his arms up exasperatedly.

The screen went blank, and Steven’s face sank. “Peridot, I’m sorry. I know you care about her a lot, I mean, I do too! But the best chance we have of saving everybody is if we get Pearl first. We know she went somewhere that was meaningful to her, so maybe she’ll see Bismuth and myself and she’ll be easier to calm down. Look, this isn’t exactly empirical science, I’m just going with what my gut tells me right now, please don’t make this any harder than it has to be…”

After some silent moments, the screens displayed, in all lower case, “sorry.” Steven smiled. “It’s okay, Peridot. We’re going to fix as much of this as we can, and getting Pearl back first means we can speed that process up. Amethyst is important, but Pearl can help us more to get started. I swear, Amethyst will come next, okay?”

The screens replied, “OKAY.”

 

Bismuth frowned. “Pearl… I never thought she would go down… Definitely not like this. You know where she is, I take it…? I mean, you did say she went somewhere meaningful to her.”

 

Steven looked over at Bismuth and smirked. “Does this mean you want to help? More importantly, does that mean you won't try to kill me or shatter my gem when my back is turned?”

 

Bismuth raised an eyebrow before sighing and pinching the bridge of her nose. She then slid her hand down the rest of her face and let it fall back at her side.

 

“From what you told me, Homeworld thinks the Earth is done for. Whatever is still here, Homeworld doesn't want it. On top of that, all the corrupted gems here are on the same side. As a Crystal Gem, I'm a protector of the Earth and its inhabitants. If those gems live here, they're inhabitants too. Even Blue Diamond… But the most important reason I'm helping you is because if they're all corrupted and you're the only one with any kind of plan to bring them back to their former selves… Well it would be pretty stupid to try to do something to you.”

 

Steven’s smirk turned into a wide grin. “So you're on my side then?”

 

Bismuth chuckled darkly. “No, kiddo. I'm on my side. Once all this is over, I want that rematch. Loser gets shattered.”

 

Steven's grin disappeared. He didn't expect Bismuth to talk like that so boldly. He slowly nodded. “After all this is over, you’ll get your rematch. But I'm not gonna shatter you. Stars, why does it always have to be shattering with you? There’s more out there than just death, you know.”

 

A tense silence filled the barn. It was only broken when Peridot’s screens started flashing with the words “STRAWBERRY BATTLEFIELD.”

 

“Oh, right! Yeah. Pearl’s stomping grounds nowadays are the strawberry battlefield.” Steven stood up and Bismuth was able to grasp how much he had grown. They were nearly the same height, but Steven was actually a tad taller than her. And he looked pretty intimidating in black.

 

Steven picked up his shield amplifier and strapped it to his back with a ripped up backpack. He unplugged it from the wall and slapped an electrode from amp onto his gem. This made Bismuth curious enough to ask a few questions, but Steven answered before she was able to verbalize them.

 

“I power the amp with my gem when I'm not here in the barn. It takes a lot out of me if I'm not careful. But that's why I wanted you to come along. I want to save most of this for Pearl, and you can poof anything I don’t want to waste my strength on. Of course, you could probably poof anything else too.”

 

Bismuth smiled. “Don't try to flatter me, Steven, it won't save you.”

 

Steven smiled back. “Maybe not, but it doesn’t hurt to try. Heck, maybe I just like being nice. It used to work wonders on anything that stood in our way. Not… Not so much anymore...” He looked at the floor contemplatively for a moment before shaking his head vigorously, snapping himself out of his flashback, and shouting. “Peridot! Keep an eye on the barn. If anything comes by, do the flashing light thing. Usually spooks ‘em away. Oh, and if you start hearing the beeping again, let me know as soon as we get back. If it means you're ‘sick’ somehow, then we need to figure out how to fix it.”

 

Steven lifted the girder that kept the barn doors closed and dropped it on the ground. Then he swiftly kicked the doors open, revealing a black, stormy sky and powerful winds. He seemed unphased by it, but Bismuth was awestruck. All the clocks in the barn said it was sometime in the afternoon, but the skies were blackened completely as the torrential downpour continued.

 

“Ready to go?” He asked the shorter gray gem as lightning streaked across the sky.

 

She smiled at his fortitude. With a clap of thunder punctuating her next sentence, she cracked her neck and said, “Let’s get down to Bismuth.”


	2. Her Ghost In the Fog

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alright, this story gained some traction. Glad you guys liked the first chapter. The idea came to me after playing through Brütal Legend and binging Mad Max movies. This vision popped into my head of an older, grizzled Steven surfing on the van, jamming out to BFG Division by Mick Gordon on his guitar while Bismuth drives and Jasper is headbanging in the passenger seat. Everything just sorta fell into place from there. I'm a fan of this chapter, I think it turned out well, but I would much rather hear your thoughts, of course. As the story goes on, more questions will be answered and it might get heavy, but obviously the story is named Heavy Metal for more than just one reason. Musical inspirations for this chapter were Only Women Bleed by Alice Cooper, I Love My Parents by Buckethead, and as always, BFG Division by Mick Gordon. Anyway, there are a few references in this one, hope you get them! Enjoy!

The trip through warp space was exceedingly awkward.  Bismuth didn’t want to make small-talk, Steven had shown he was just as bad as Rose Quartz, and Rose Quartz was her sworn enemy.  To come across as friendly?  That just wouldn’t do any good.  She decided that if Steven asked her any questions, they’d just be one word answers until they got to the Strawberry Battlefield.  No use making chit-chat if she was going to kill him anyway.  It would just make it harder when the time finally came.  
  
Steven felt much the same, if he were to be honest.  Not so much about the murder, more about the mutual silence.  Anything he had to say would probably just make their already tenuous alliance even more fragile.  Sure, she probably wouldn’t hurt him until they had a large chunk of gems back to their normal selves, but he wanted to make sure the chances of having a “fight to the death” were as minimal as possible.  It was not an endeavor he ever thought he would have to make, but these were strange times indeed.  
  
He also couldn’t help but feel a bit sad.  He was fairly certain that Bismuth wouldn’t want to be “friends” by any stretch of the word, but he still had some hope that it might happen.  If there was one thing that Steven used to be full of, it was optimism.  It wasn’t his fault that the glass just so happened to be half-empty lately.  
  
As the pair continued flying through the warp space, Steven’s calm, stoic expression slowly turned into a frown, and Bismuth did her best not to notice.  In fact, she wanted to look at anything but his face.  She gave him a quick once-over, just to see what he was packing besides his guitar.  Maybe Steven would have had the sense to keep Rose’s sword with him, but the only pink that was on him was the shield in his amplifier, the gem on his stomach, and the ringlets at the ends of his hair.  If she squinted, she could just make out a few pink speckles in his beard as well, but Bismuth wasn’t sure if that was just a trick of the light or not.  
  
She did, however, notice a metal handle jutting out of the backpack in which the amplifier was being held.  It was wrapped in some kind of black adhesive strip, possibly electrical tape.  She didn’t want to say anything, really.  This was just another mission for her, not some kind of vacation with a friend.  So she began to rationalize it as being important enough to break the silence.  If she and Steven were going to fight together, it would do well for her to know what he had that could help them both should the situation arise.  
  
“Steven?”  She asked, trying her best to not seem too interested.  
  
Steven took in a sharp breath and wiped his eyes a little.  Once again, Bismuth tried her best not to notice.  
  
“Y-Yeah, Bismuth, what is it?”  
  
Unmoved by his display of emotion, she put the question out into the ether.  
  
“What’s that other thing in your backpack?”  
  
Steven’s eyes, filled with tears not a moment ago, suddenly opened wide.  A smirk crossed his face and a small chuckle left his mouth.  Bismuth raised an eyebrow and looked uneasy as Steven unleashed an aluminum baseball bat from his backpack.  It was wrapped in a long, rusty chain, and had several heavy padlocks all over just for the added weight.  It was like some sort of improvised mace, nowhere near as elegant as anything Bismuth had made for the other gems.  No, if anything, she would compare it to The Breaking Point.  Not graceful in the slightest, but it clearly got the job done.  
  
“I call her Nikki.  She’s my darling, nowadays.  Not much to look at, but she’ll rock you to your core in a heartbeat.  Excuse the dried blood… Back in the day, I was kind of famous in the human world.  When everything with a gem on it turns into some kind of monster except for you, people tend to lose their manners when you’re around.”  
  
He ran his fingers through his hair, from his forehead to the back of his scalp, and shook his head, letting his hair fall in a more comfortable position.  
  
Bismuth stared at him, slack jawed.  “Oh no, you’re not gonna just throw that one at me and expect me to accept that you flatout murdered people and I got bubbled for wanting to shatter gems.  How in the world do you think that’s even remotely fair?!”  
  
She got in a rather offensive stance, as if she was going to throw him out into warp space.  But Steven didn’t flinch.  No matter how intimidating Bismuth wanted to be, it just wasn’t phasing him.  It made her wonder what happened to him.  What did Steven go through that let him walk this tall?  
  
“Bismuth, I don’t know if you realize this, but people, you know, human beings, they can’t exactly poof.  When their ‘forms destabilize,’ they get hurt.  And if they get hurt badly enough, they die.  No retreating into our gems, no being bubbled, do not pass go, do not collect 200 dollars, go directly to jail.”  
  
Bismuth continued staring at Steven, clearly confused.  Steven realized that board game references would go right over her head, so he tried his best to simplify.  
  
“When the corruption happened again, I wasn’t safe.  If you had a gem, you were dangerous, so everyone wanted you ‘dealt with.’  So I had to ‘deal with’ the people who were after me.  I didn’t want them to hurt them, but I had to defend myself…  And I learned pretty quickly that not every problem can be dealt with with sunshine and rainbows…”  
  
For the first time since she had been unbubbled, Bismuth was sincerely sympathetic toward Steven.  She thought better than to continue probing, and until they reached the next warp pad, the pair remained quiet.

 

  
OoOoOoOoOoO  


  
Suddenly, they came to a stop.  Warp space had disappeared, and before them lay the Strawberry Battlefield.  It’s a difficult task, taking a battlefield and making it look even worse.  But somehow, these monsters, these corrupted beasts managed to do it.  It was more of a Strawberry Jam Battlefield at this point.  The comparison made Steven mumble a few things under his breath, but Bismuth didn’t bother asking him to repeat them.  
  
As they walked out into the sickly sweetness, Bismuth couldn’t help but notice the continuing rainfall.  She found it a bit strange.  She doubted Steven took her bubble far from the temple, that was, after all, where the gems kept all of their bubbles, but the Strawberry Battlefield was across the ocean from their former base.  She took a mental note of the oddness, but chalked it up to coincidence.  It does rain in more than one place at the same time, after all.  It didn't help that it was the middle of the night, though. Both Bismuth and Steven turned on their own lights, Bismuth illuminating her gem and Steven turning on a clip-on, weatherproof flashlight that was hanging off of his backpack.  
  
The battlefield looked nothing like it did before.  Where there was lush flora, there were now craters and trenches, and the colossal weapons that had found their last resting place were broken, their pieces scattered across the landscape.  It was a rather morose sight for Bismuth, as quite a few of those weapons were her own handiwork.

 

But before she could mourn, her eyes were greeted with another, much more alien vision.  Across the hilltops and far off fields, corrupted quartzes roamed free.  It was such a strange sight, it was almost as if they were wild herds of buffalo that grazed on whatever strawberry essence still remained here.  Although, that would require that the gems would eat.  And of course, gems do not do that.  So the question lingered, why were they here?  What were they doing?  The more she thought about the events of the day, the more she realized that Steven had figured it out, whether he knew it or not.  Pearl came to this place because it meant something important to her.  These gems probably came here for much the same reason.  
  
Steven was already making his way across the relentlessly adhesive ground.  Every footstep he took made a “squish” sound, which was kind of annoying considering that it meant he would have to clean his boots like crazy when he got back to the barn.  That thought lead to another, however, as he imagined how much worse it would be if he still wore his flip-flops everywhere.  
  
Both he and his mind continued to wander.  Despite what happened to him and his family, his curiosity never left him.  His mind questioned everything he saw, no matter how many times he experienced it.  Of course, a wandering mind was often prone to some intrusive thoughts, and when they came, he did his best to push them back out.  He would do his best to focus on something else, in this case, whether or not Bismuth was following him.  He paused for a brief moment and heard heavier squishing noises approaching from behind.  It didn’t take a genius to put two and two together.  
  
“Steven, you said you knew where Pearl was, right?”  
  
Steven gritted his teeth, knowing what was coming.  
  
“Yep.  Sure did.”  
  
A few moments pass as the two continued walking.  Pretty quickly, Bismuth lost her patience.  
  
“Well where is she?!” she yelled.  
  
Steven winced and rubbed the inside of his left ear with his pinky.  
  
“Oh my stars, keep your voice down.  I have enough hearing problems with the loud guitar playing, I don’t need you adding to it by screaming right next to me.”  
  
Bismuth was about to shout again, but Steven threw his hand forward and pointed up at several floating chunks of rock.  
  
“She’s up there.”

 

Bismuth adjusted her posture so her gem light shone up at the platforms.  Even from where they were, they could see something else gliding from rock to rock.

 

“That's Pearl?”  Bismuth said, flabbergasted.

 

Steven sighed, a hint of sadness in his voice when he replied with a meek “Yeah…”  

 

Pearl meant a lot to Steven.  That’s not to say that the other gems weren't important to him, but Pearl was like the mother he never had.  Garnet helped where she could, but was more of a mentor most of the time, especially as he got older.  Amethyst was more like a sister most of the time, both of them getting in trouble together.  But Pearl was different.

 

OoOoOoOoOoO

 

It was a few months after Steven had turned 17.  Amethyst had taken Steven to a party, as he was getting older and being given more responsibilities without any of the perks.  Amethyst didn't like seeing Steven trying to bottle everything up and decided he needed to let loose a little.  Training five days a week, learning to drive, (Steven had a growth spurt in the middle of a lesson and accidentally crashed the van,) learning more about the gems and their history, it all was very physically and emotionally draining.  Amethyst always knew how to perk someone up.

 

It was a college party, set up by some kids at BCCC, and everyone was having a great time.  But college parties, as they do, usually have alcohol at them.  This was no exception.  While Amethyst was dancing and going crazy, Steven had a few glasses of the spiked fruit punch.  This, of course, was against the law, but due to how Steven aged, nobody really questioned how old he was.  He actually looked older than most of the other kids there.

 

After she had been dancing for about an hour, Amethyst realized Steven wasn't with her.  This in and of itself was not an issue, she assumed Steven was off making new friends like he usually did.  After all, that was something he was great at.  She didn't expect to see him plastered on a couch.

 

As he leaned on Amethysts shoulder on the way back to the temple, Steven went on and on about how Connie didn't love him anymore and how they were going to break up and he was “like a billion percent positive” about it.  Amethyst knew that they just had a fight, like all couples did, but Steven was taking this one particularly hard.

 

“An then sh’said sh’didn know how sh’could pass the bar ekzzzzam if she wa’sout fi’din monssers all th’time.  I think she hates sme, Amethyss…”

 

Amethyst had dealt with drunks before.  But Steven was different in that she cared about him.  She also cared about Vidalia and would help her through any tough times that lead to a night of binging on Smirnoff Lime, but Vidalia was just a friend.  Steven was family.

 

“Steven, it’s gonna be fine, okay?  You two will figure things out, you always do.  She’s going to law school, sure, but she’s not gonna start ogling other dudes just because you're not around.  You're special, Ste-man.  Careful now, we’re going up some stairs.  And please, please stay quiet.”

 

Steven didn’t have to try too hard to be quiet.  He was already almost passed out.  But that didn't give Amethyst much confidence.  She let Steven drink, and now he was almost completely hammered.  It's one thing to let loose at a party by dancing your cares away, but she had seen too many of her friends hit the bottle way too hard to let Steven go down the same path.

 

The pair of them made it through the door to the beach house carefully and quietly.  “Okay, Steven, just a few more stairs and we’ll have you tucked in bed and off to Dreamland.  Doesn't that sound nice?”

 

Steven slurred a bit too loudly.  “Thanksss Amethyss, yertha bess…”

 

Amethyst tried to shush him as best as she could while she helped him into bed.  “Steven quiet!  Pearl can't find out that you got drunk or she’ll kill me.”

 

And then, in a moment Amethyst would later describe as “the most afraid she had ever been,” she heard a familiar voice from down the stairs.

 

“You're right,” Pearl said, with a quiet ferocity that conveyed just how mad she was, “she probably would.”

 

Amethyst yelped and spun around, seeing that Pearl was sitting on the couch directly to the right of the door.  Amethyst wasn’t sure how she missed her, but it was too late now.  It didn't matter, she was done for.  Amethyst quickly backed away further into Steven’s loft, toward his slatted closet door.

 

“Oh!  Uhhh…  Hey-hey Pearl!  I thought y-you would be in your room!  It’s pretty ah…  Pretty late for you!”

 

Pearl slowly made her way up the stairs toward her purple teammate.  “Yes, it is rather late.  Which is why I was so curious as to why Steven wasn't home.  Curious enough that I thought I’d wait up for him!”  
  
Amethyst had reached the closet door and there was nowhere else to go.  Her back met wood and she was cornered by her teammate.  She knew, deep down, that Pearl would never hurt her on purpose, but Pearl could be exceedingly terrifying when it came to all matters involving Steven.  And Steven was, at that moment, drunkenly attempting to disrobe and get into bed.  
  
“P-Pearl, now, hold on!  He wasn’t supposed to drink, we were just supposed to dance!  You know, get our frustrations out in a healthy way!  You’re all about health, right?”  
  
Amethyst was grasping at straws and she knew it.  She was irresponsible, leaving him alone like that, but she didn’t blame herself.  Steven was 17, he should know better by now.  But Pearl didn’t see it that way.  
  
“Amethyst, Steven is inebriated!  Drunk!  Sloshed, wasted, hammered, whatever synonym you want to use for it!  That’s pretty far from healthy, don’t you think?”  
  
Pearl had her hands on her hips and at this point, her nose was directly in Amethyst’s face.  Amethyst, instead of being scared, got defensive.  
  
“Hey, don’t you point that thing at me!  I don’t see you trying to help him whenever he has an argument with his future wife!”  
  
Pearl became extremely offended at this.  Amethyst had no right to say what she said, because it just wasn’t true.  Pearl was always there whenever Steven needed her.  She made some mistakes, but so does everyone.  
  
“Excuse me?  You think dancing his problems away is going to solve anything?  Ignoring the fact that you let Steven drink underage, which is both bad for his health and happens to break the law, which could have put him in jail, you’re just teaching him to run away from his problems!  When has that ever helped any of us?!”  
  
Amethyst looked down so her hair covered her face.  This was usually a telltale sign that Amethyst was about to crack, and that’s not what Pearl wanted.  She didn’t mean to strike any kind of nerve in her teammate and certainly didn’t want to make her feel bad.  Even if she screwed up sometimes, Peal loved Amethyst.  The two of them were like sisters, The Crystal Gems were one big family, and no petty argument was going to ruin that.  So, in a display of mercy, Pearl heaved a sigh and placed a hand on Amethyst’s shoulder.  
  
“Amethyst, I don’t want to hurt your feelings or anything, I just…  You know how I get with Steven…”  
  
Amethyst sniffled and nodded, doing her best to keep her face hidden.  “I didn’t even think they had any alcohol…  It just looked like fruit punch, that’s probably why he drank it.  It was an accident, P, I swear…  I should have been more careful and I wasn’t, you don’t have to hammer it in that I make a lot of mistakes.”  
  
Pearl frowned and immediately pulled Amethyst in for a hug.  They held that position for a while, Amethyst trying very hard to hold back any tears.  
  
“I’m sorry for not hearing your side of the story,” Pearl said.  “I should have known you would never let Steven drink on purpose.  I know I should give you more credit, and I apologize.”  
  
Amethyst held on tighter.  She liked affection in all forms, but it was rare when it came from Pearl.  She wasn’t sure why, but the two of them were never really affectionate with one another.  So when it actually did happen, it meant a lot.  “It’s okay…  I know I screw up sometimes, I know I should be more responsible.  Look, can we just put this on the backburner until Steven’s sober?  I feel like we should talk to him about it too…”  
  
Pearl let Amethyst go, nodding her head in agreement as she did.  “You’re right.  No matter if it looked like fruit punch, he would have at least tasted the alcohol in it after a few sips.  I think Steven knew what he was doing in this case…  But for now, let’s put a pin in this.  You go decompress in your room for the night.  Garnet’s off on a solo mission, so I’ll keep an eye on Steven until he passes out, okay?”  
  
Amethyst tried to stealthily wipe her eyes, but her attempt failed miserably.  Pearl gave her a sympathetic smile and a hair ruffle before Amethyst headed into her room in the temple.  
  
Pearl let out a sigh and took a seat on the bed next to a half-naked Steven, who had settled on sleeping in his T-shirt and underwear for the night.  She was almost impressed that he managed to get his pants off without breaking anything.  He had covered himself with his blanket as best as he could, and his eyes were closed, but he was still awake.  Pearl could tell, as Steven snored pretty loudly nowadays.  
  
“Steven?  I know you’re still up.  It’s me, Pearl.”  
  
Steven made a sad groan and rolled over so his back was facing the pale gem.  
  
“Hi Pearl…” he said, with a very guilty tone.  
  
“You know you’re in a lot of trouble, young man.  Drinking underage could have put you in jail.”  
  
Steven was lucid enough to manage, “No, Pearl, Imma minor…  Juss jubinile hall…”  
  
Pearl smiled, put a hand on Steven’s leg and gave it a quick pat.  “Get some sleep, Steven.  We’ll talk about this tomorrow.”  
  
Steven yawned and asked, “Does thiss mean I’m not in truvvle?”  
  
Pearl giggled, but did her best to remain stern.  “You’re still in trouble, Steven.  But it’s only because we care about you, you know that, right?”  
  
Steven let out a “Yes…” with a very long “S” sound at the end.  
  
Pearl stood up and started down the stairs to fill up a glass of water to leave on his nightstand for when he woke up in the morning.  “Good.  I love you, Steven.”  
  
Pearl was about halfway down the staircase when she heard the words, “I love you too, Mom…”  
  
Immediately, she froze.  Later, she would be glad that she didn’t get the water first before attempting to talk with Steven, because she surely would have dropped it.  
  
“What did you…?” she began, in a hushed tone, but Steven’s snores made it apparent that he was already fast asleep.    
  
The first four words were ones that they had said back and forth to each other for years, but that last one…  Surely it had to be a mistake, surely it was because Steven wasn’t in the right mind.  But on the other hand, Amethyst had said on multiple occasions that “drunken words are sober thoughts,” and Amethyst was a kind of authority on matters such as those.  
  
They were so strange, the feelings that Pearl was experiencing.  Fear, grief, guilt, but at the same time, love, happiness, and what some might call a maternal instinct.  She herself had called Steven “her baby” a few times, so if Steven had decided somewhere that Pearl was his mother figure, then it would be hypocritical of her to deny that honor.  
  
All of a sudden, she wasn’t able to stand anymore.  She sat down on the stairs, slowly taking in everything that happened in just those five little words.  A struggle inside of her raged, a struggle between what Rose Quartz rightfully should be called and what Steven wanted.  She stared up at the portrait above the doorway and wondered what the right course of action would be, but got no answers.  Rose Quartz wasn’t around anymore.  
  
Rose Quartz wasn’t around anymore…  
  
The thought repeated itself in Pearl’s head quite a few times that night.  She would remain on the steps that lead up to Steven’s bedroom until sun started rising.  
  
The next day played out like it would have normally.  Pearl never found out if Steven remembered what he called her, but she never exactly brought it up either.  But after that, things between them were a bit different.  Pearl seemed more protective of him.  Not in an overbearing way, but like a mother and her child.  Steven, if he noticed, didn’t seem to mind all that much.  
  
Their relationship would never be quite the same, but in the best possible way.  On the surface, things remained the way they always had been.  Steven called Pearl by her name, and Pearl never used the term “son” to describe Steven, even if she felt that way.  But there was a kind of warmth between the two that wasn’t there before, and though both Amethyst and Garnet realized it, neither of them stopped it.  It made everything a bit happier, a bit more bearable.  
  
It made it all the harder to watch when Pearl and the rest of the gems turned into monsters right before Steven’s eyes.  
  


 

OoOoOoOoOoOoOoO

  
  
  
Steven snapped out of his daydream to the sound of Bismuth snapping her fingers right in front of his face.  
  
“Yo!  Steven?  You in there, kid?”  She had a mix of concern and impatience on her face.  
  
Steven shook the hair out of his face and slicked it back with his hand again.  
  
“Yeah, yeah, I’m here…  Sorry, I zoned out there for a bit…  This is just really important to me.”  
  
Bismuth’s expression changed to one filled with disgust.  “Uhh, yeah short-stuff, it’s important to me too.  So what do you say we get to work instead of getting lost in our thoughts?  Or is that gonna be too much for you to handle?”  
  
Steven closed his eyes and cracked his neck both ways before taking a deep breath limbering up a bit.  
  
“Bismuth, I need you to shapeshift your hands and throw me up into the air as hard as you can.”  
  
Bismuth chuckled at first, but her face dropped pretty quickly.  “Wait, you’re serious?  Steven, look, I’m pretty strong, but even someone like me can’t throw a heater that mean.”  
  
Steven shot her a confused look and she clarified.  
  
“A heater.  You know, a fast-ball?  Ugh, look, I can’t throw you that far.  If you want to get up there, we need to get closer.  Like ‘right next to those quartzes’ closer.  Think you can handle a bit of hand-to-hand?”  
  
One of the spiteful laughs Steven had given earlier in the day escaped his lips as he removed Nikki from her place on his back.  He gave her a few practice swings before he started marching toward the herd of corrupted gems.  
  
“Bismuth, I’ve adopted a sort of battle-cry since this whole mess kicked off and I started fending for myself.”  He let his club collide with a few large stones and let the sound ring out.  The quartz herd definitely heard it and all of them looked in their direction.  A few of them even started moving toward them.  “It’s from a video game that Amethyst used to let me play when Pearl wasn’t around.  It’s pretty apt for this, I’d say.”  
  
“Yeah…?”  Bismuth said uneasily as the monsters on the horizon began charging straight at them.  “Lemme hear it...”  She shapeshifted her hands into hammers as Steven broke out into a sprint toward the beasts.  
  
As Steven brought his right arm into the air, the words slipped out of his mouth with a strange determination behind them.  It bordered on sadistic, and though she wouldn’t admit it, it made Bismuth almost giddy.  
  
“Rip and tear, Bismuth.”


	3. The Thing That Should Not Be

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WOW it's been a while. I'm so sorry for the delay, there's really no excuse other than it just wasn't coming to me as easily. And even that doesn't justify it. Still, I'd much rather push out a chapter I'm proud of much later than haphazardly throw out one that makes no sense and is just awful. I'll do my best to bring things up to a better pace, but no promises. I'm hoping very hard that this sort of thing doesn't happen again, but I can't really control how any of the ideas come to me. Anyway, my most profound apologies, I hope this lives up to all of your standards as much as it lives up to mine. Musical inspirations for this chapter include Second Coming by CFO$, Catch Your Breath by CFO$, Sting's Theme Remix by The Enigma TNG, Lateralus by Tool, Sulphur Injection by Apostasy, and as always, BFG Division by Mick Gordon.

Steven’s stride was enormous as he charged toward the approaching stampede of corrupted gems before him.  Bismuth wasn't far behind either, both of her hands already shapeshifted and ready for whatever havoc she wanted to wreak.

Steven held Nikki tightly; his father’s guitar stayed strapped to his back.  He had to save his energy for Pearl, so he couldn’t waste any chords on the herd of gems.  Nikki was going to need some new chains by the time this was over, he knew it already.   
  
As Bismuth and Steven both got within spitting distance of the pack, Steven lept into the air, floating for a moment.  Bismuth stood her ground, however, double-fisting hammers to knock each gem aside as they attempted to consume her with their gaping maws.  But she was not so lucky that she could continue this, as one particularly large jasper had knocked her down and begun trying very hard to swipe at her, only narrowly missing each time.  She kept it at bay as long as she could, but was not going to be able to hold out forever.   
  
“Don’t you leave me to do this alone, Steven!” she shouted, loud enough that the boy could hear her, even over the combination of snarls and growls from the collection of quartzes that they picked a fight with.  Bismuth needn’t have worried, however, because almost as soon as she finished shouting, Steven plummeted to the ground like a comet, Nikki extended right above the head of an amethyst.   
  
The metallic “plink” sound made Bismuth grit her teeth.  The reverberation of it was brutal and made her wince just thinking about the damage it must have done.  As she was battering other quartzes as much as she could, her hands shifting from hammers to blades, she kept hearing the same “plink” sound, again and again, coming closer and closer.  Finally, Steven came flying into view.  He was screaming and being propelled backward, most likely by any number of the large quartz corruptions that had come after them.  The impact knocked the jasper off its feet.  Steven, sensing a moment of opportunity, summoned one of his shields and placed it right on the jasper’s neck with his left arm, and slammed Nikki down on top of it, poofing the corruption guillotine style.   
  
With no time to be impressed, Bismuth leaned back and kicked herself back up onto her feet, just in time to hit a running amethyst in the face with her hammer.  She sent it skidding into the ground, but it quickly rejoined the pack that had begun circling both of the Crystal Gems.   
  
Steven and Bismuth stood back to back.  They were surrounded on all sides by the corrupted herd.  Steven held Nikki out defensively, just waiting for one of the quartzes to try and take him on.  Bismuth was much the same, her axe hands scraping against one another, causing a few sparks each time the collided.   
  
“Steven,” Bismuth began, “I thought you knew what you were doing when you charged at these things.   
  
She looked over at him and immediately grew concerned.  His right eye was twitching and his breathing had become ragged.   
  
“I do know what I’m doing, Bismuth…”  She watched his tongue scrape over his teeth.  He seemed like a man possessed.  She wasn’t frightened, however.  She knew that Steven wouldn’t hurt her, not until their work was done.  Their family needed to be saved before any retribution would happen.   
  
“They should come at us one at a time…”  Steven said, looking around, trying to size up the crowd.   
  
“How do you know that?”  Bismuth asked, clanging her axe hands together to try and keep the beasts at bay.  “They’re corruptions, they don’t plan their attacks, they act on instinct.”   
  
“You’re right, they do.  And what instincts do most quartzes have?”  Steven swung Nikki around a few times.   
  
“What?  Steven, I don’t know, ah…  Let’s see, violence, maybe?  Yeah, violence, fighting and all that, uhm, tying to one-up each other- Oh.  Oh I see how it is.”   
  
She put the pieces together.  The quartzes were playing with them.  One beast at a time in the circle, it was the honorable thing.  Whoever took them down was the winner.  How Steven had come to figure this out was a mystery.  He would have to have spent months just watching these things, observing, learning.   
  
“Yeah, you’re getting it.  Since there are two of us, they might come out in pairs, I don’t know if they have some sort of internal tag-team rule or something.”   
  
Steven dismissed his shield from his left arm and held Nikki with both hands.  The charging circle of quartzes had slowed down considerably, the beasts all simply walking.  Their eyes, hidden under tufts of hair, remained watchful of the two Crystal Gems.   
  
Suddenly and without warning, a smaller kind of jasper burst forward toward Bismuth, who quickly shapeshifted one hand into a hammer and beat it down, dodging out of the way of its charge in the same fashion as a toreador.  Its head slammed into the ground and she quickly decapitated the thing with her axe.  A gem lay at the bottom of a large plume of orange smoke.  She bubbled it quickly and sent it off.   
  
Steven didn’t know where that bubble had ended up.  But he supposed he had to cross that bridge when they came to it, considering the circumstances they were currently in.  He scanned the crowd and his eyes met one of the monsters behaving oddly.  He smirked, knowing it was the next one that would try and charge at them.   
  
“Batter up…”  he said, getting into a proper baseball stance.  The creature roared and shot toward him.  He quickly shifted to the left and nailed the quartz right in the face as hard as he could.   
  
“HOME RUN, RIGHT OVER THE FENCES, CRYSTAL GEMS TAKE THE SERIES!”  Steven shouted and stomped angrily as it exploded into yet another plume of smoke.   
  


He turned on his heel and pointed his bat at another Quartz that was raring to go.  “YOU!  BRING IT!”  He yelled, baiting it to come after him.  And come for him it did, charging straight at him.  Both Steven and the corruption let out roars that were equally mighty.

 

OoOoOoOoOoO

  
The pair continued to pummel the quartz horde for the next fifteen minutes or so.  Occasionally, they would get tossed back, but the other was always there to pull them back.  Before they both collapsed from exhaustion, they had accomplished something great.  All the quartzes in that particular herd had been dealt with and bubbled, safely put away until Steven was able to cure the corruption that had taken over them.  The young man lay on his back, eyes closed, thanking the stars for the rain.  He could always count on it to keep him cool.

Steven was holding the right side of his abdomen tightly.  It felt like it was on fire, but he chalked it up to getting scratched or something.  It was odd, though, as he was unable to feel any sort of claw marks.  He took a few deep breaths and the pain began to subside.  He let out an audible sigh of relief and tried to relax.  If he pulled something, he wanted to take a moment and rest before continuing.

After a few moments he heard the sound of his comrade marching over to him, the sticky strawberry jam making squishing noises with her every step.  Steven wasn’t sure what she was doing, exactly, but before he knew it, she had fallen backwards onto the jam covered ground beside him.  Their heads were parallel as the rain continued to wash the stickiness off their faces.   
  
“Not bad, short stuff,” Bismuth began, “you fight pretty well for a half-breed.”   
  
Steven smiled slightly at that.  “For a half-breed?”  he asked jokingly, a layer of sarcastic agitation coating his voice.   
  
Bismuth relented, “Alright, alright!  You fight well for a gem.  Stars, you fight well for a Crystal Gem.  Not a lot of us would even charge straight into the enemy.  A lot of us used ranged weapons, tried to stay pretty far away.  But you?  Shit, you brought them to us.  No nonsense, no element of surprise, no frills.  I like it.  And that club of yours too.  Nikki, right?”   
  
Steven chuckled slightly and nodded.  “Like I said, she’s my darling.  Really, the only woman in my life right now.  Especially since Connie and I got separated...”   
  
Bismuth raised an eyebrow.  “Connie?  What’s a connie?”   
  
“Connie isn’t a thing, she’s a person.  A…  A wonderful girl who means a lot to me.  I haven’t seen her in years…  I miss her a lot.”   
  
“Ohhh!”  Bismuth exclaimed.  “I get it!  She’s the Ruby to your Sapphire!  Damn, Steven, nice work.”   
  
“Yeah,” Steven began, “That’s close enough, I can’t think of a better way to describe it in gem terms.  Anyway, before the crap with White Diamond and the second rebellion, we were gonna get married, maybe have a few kids.  But I don’t know if that’s gonna work out anymore…”  Steven was glad it was raining in that moment.  It made it harder to see the tears he was beginning to shed.  “I mean, I hope she’s okay, but she got taken to one of the safe-havens with her parents, and I have no idea what happened to her since.  I know a lot of safe-havens are constantly raided, the people taken as slaves, either for labor or.. Well... you know, or worse…  If I know her as well as I think I do, she’s probably fine.  But there’s no way to know for sure.  She’s tough as nails, but even she couldn’t stand up to a gang of raiders on her own.  Guns might not work on gems very well, but on a human?  She can’t do much with that sword against a semi-automatic rifle.”   
  
Bismuth sat up, heaving a sigh and doing her best to not look at Steven.  She didn’t want to show any sympathy toward him, but that was damn near impossible.   
  
“That’s…  Well, that’s rough, kid…  If it helps at all, I’ve been there before too.  Now, that’s a story for another time, but if she’s as tough as you say, if she’s really the spitfire you made her out to be?  Well, she’s probably better off than we are.”   
  
Steven let out a breath he didn’t realize he was holding and got to his feet.  He was a bit surprised that Bismuth tried to comfort him, as not long ago, she told him she was going to try and murder him when all of this had blown over.  Maybe she was a bit softer than she was letting on.  Or maybe she was trying to make him let his guard down.  He didn’t know which was true, but there were more pressing matters to attend to.   
  
“Wow- Okay, I am sorry.  I did not mean to get so emotional just now.  We have bigger fish to fry.  Pearl is up there, possibly in pain, and we need to pacify her without hurting her too much.”  He pointed his finger at the floating rock formation above them.  A darkened figure jumped between the platforms.  Underneath the sound of rain, an audible screech echoed through the battlefield.

“So I'm thinking, you throw me up there and I'll try to stay quiet and hidden until you're up there with me.  Last time I tried to wrangle her by myself, she got away, real easy.  She's like some kinda bird now.  But that's where you come in.  You get up there with me and get behind her.  I'll distract Pearl while you grab her and hold on.  Once she's incapacitated, I'll let a few chords cry out.  Don't worry, the resonant frequency of a corrupted gem is on a different wavelength than yours or mine.  To put it simply, my guitar only takes down normal gems when I have to.  And presently, I do not have to.  So you'll be ok, just be ready to catch her gem when she poofs.  If it falls off the platforms, she could shatter.”   
  
Bismuth got to her feet and looked up as well.  “Sounds like a lot of thought went into this.  You've been planning this for a long time, haven't you?”

Steven stared at Bismuth incredulously.  “Well yeah, no shit.  Pearl is my family.  I've been working on plans to save every single member of my family.  You could have been a part of it too, but…”  He averted his gaze for a moment before taking a deep breath and evacuating it from his lungs.  “Well, anyway, time’s a-wastin’.  You ready to do this?”

Bismuth took another gaze up at the floating islands in the sky.  “Right…  Steven, listen, ah…  I might get a little shaky up there, if I’m being honest.  I’ve seen a lot of my friends get poofed, and others were even shattered.  But this…  I mean, I heard rumors that Homeworld was cooking something like this up, but I just chalked it up to paranoia.  We got intelligence reports from our various moles, but this is new territory for me.  Those quartzes…”  She paused, trying to figure out what she had seen.  “They were monsters.  I might have even known some of them, and I just beat them into oblivion.  I don’t-”  Bismuth swallowed hard and took a moment to collect herself.  The next words that came out of her mouth were haggard, like it took her great effort to even say them.  “I don’t know how I’m going to react when I see what Pearl turned into…”   
  
She kept her eyes up into the sky.  Steven wondered if maybe Bismuth were glad it was raining too.  She was a Crystal Gem, crying was kind of their thing.   
  
Suddenly, Bismuth felt something on her back.  She looked over to see Steven with a sympathetic face and his arm extended behind her.  His other arm was extended outward, inviting her in for a hug.   
  
“I know, Bismuth, I know…  It never goes away, but it gets a little easier every time.”   
  
She froze in place for a moment before shaking her head and brushing Steven’s arm off, stomping forward a few steps.  Steven didn’t follow, he realized she needed a bit of space, especially from him.  He could only imagine what was running through Bismuth’s head at that moment, maybe something about how if Rose Quartz had used the Breaking Point, all of her friends would still be around.  Maybe she was just upset that it had come to this.  He wouldn’t know for sure.   
  
Bismuth stood off to the side for a few moments, hands on the back of her head, fingers running through her rainbow dreadlocks that had become slick from the downpour of rain that had seemed to follow the two of them.  She had so many questions that she knew couldn’t be answered by Steven, or even Pearl or Garnet, should they ever be healed.  That thought brought another inevitable question she was going to have to get answered; could Steven even make good on what he was promising?  Was this all just some elaborate plan to do something horrible to her?  Was White Diamond even the one behind all of this?  Maybe it was Steven and he was just leading her on until he wanted to pull that trigger.  But surely he would have done so by now if he wanted to.  She couldn’t take all the randomness, all the variables, she needed a constant, she had to have at least one question answered.   
  
“Steven…”  She said, breathlessly.  She tried to mask her breaking voice, but it didn’t work.  Steven could see right through the facade, even if he didn’t say anything about it.   
  
“Yeah, Bismuth?”  he replied, innocently.   
  
“Steven, why are you doing this?  Why are you doing any of this?”   
  
Steven’s calm demeanor turned to confusion.  “What..  What do you mean?  Why wouldn’t I?”   
  
Bismuth turned toward him and began moving in his direction.  He didn’t waver, he stayed firmly planted where he was.   
  
“Why are you trying to save anybody?  Homeworld won, the Earth lost, there’s no chance that things will get back to how they were any time soon, why are you even bothering?  What are you so afraid of when it’s already this bad?!”   
  
Steven made eye contact with Bismuth and saw the desperation in her eyes, the sadness and longing that he felt the day everything changed, the day his friends and family were all taken from him in some form or another.  The day he failed to save any more than a single gem.  The day that he will never forget until the day he dies.   
  
“What am I afraid of…?  What am I AFRAID OF?!  Bismuth, I’m not doing this because I’m scared.  I’m not driven by fear, I’m driven by anger.  Anger at what happened to my family, anger at the gems who thought this was acceptable, anger at myself for letting it happen right in front of me.  I only had time to send out one shield, and I gave it to Peridot, and now Peridot can’t even reform!  I failed, Bismuth, I hit the bottom hard, and now, I’m clawing my way deeper until there’s nothing left to dig through.  Damnit, do you think I would unbubble you if I had a single better option?  Not a chance!”   
  
Steven’s eyes were beginning to go bloodshot, but he took a few breaths to quell his rising anger and calm himself back down to a reasonable level.  He needed a clear head for this to work out.   
  
“Bismuth, I’m done being afraid.  I have nothing left to lose.  I don’t even know how much longer Peridot could keep up her current state.  If the wind turbine she made goes down, I can’t fix that.  As soon as something that requires routine maintenance happens, she’s probably gone forever.  But I’m so tired, Bismuth, so tired of being scared, so tired of being afraid, I can’t do it anymore.  So I won’t.  But I’ll tell you what I will do;  I’m gonna make the people who thought they could destroy my family regret the day they got the idea that it was remotely okay to do so.  I’m going to make them wish they never found the Earth, I’m gonna make ‘em wish they were shattered by the time I’m done with them.  White Diamond does not stand a chance against me when it’s finally time to bring the fight to her.”   
  
Bismuth had calmed down and was clearly deep in thought about what Steven had said.  But Steven couldn’t wait for her to get through her current existential crisis, there were more important things on their plate.   
  
“But Bismuth, we can’t take down White Diamond until we rescue my family.  We’re gonna do this, okay?  Bismuth, look at me and tell me you’re gonna be okay.”   
  
Bismuth finally looked back up at Steven and, after holding eye contact with him for close to half a minute, she started nodding, slowly at first but picking up speed.  “I am going to be okay…  I’m gonna throw you up there, you’re gonna scope things out, I’m gonna get up there with you, and we’re going to pounce on Pearl before she hurts herself or anybody else.”   
  
Steven breathed a sigh of relief and placed a hand on her shoulder.  “Atta’ gem…”

  
  


OoOoOoOoOoOoO

  
  
  
Bismuth was making her way to the top of the cliff where she would be able to hop from platform to platform in order to make it over to where Pearl was.  She was afraid of what she might see, what might have happened to her friend, but she couldn’t let her fear paralyze her.  There was no Garnet here to make sure she was level headed, no Rose to let her know she was loved (even if she knew now that it was all a bunch of lies), no Biggs, no Crazy Lace, no Snowflake, just her.  Her and whatever Steven was.  She still thought he was probably Rose Quartz in disguise, but as she’d told herself over and over again in her head, she didn’t have any other options.  All evidence showed that every gem was either shattered or corrupted, and she barely knew what corruption was.  She was almost certain she recognized some of the quartz gems that she and Steven had taken on moments ago, but that was a thought she couldn’t trust.  Maybe it was all too much for her to deal with on an emotional level and she was seeing things.  Or worse, maybe it was getting to her too.  Maybe the corruption lingered in the air like a sickness, maybe she was a ticking timebomb, maybe-   
  
She stopped.  She shook her head and took a deep breath, trying her best to remember the meditation techniques Garnet had taught her.  Who is she?  Bismuth.  Where was she?  The Strawberry Battlefield.  What is she doing?  Saving Pearl.  Why was she saving Pearl?  Because Pearl is her friend.   
  
She got the standard grounding questions out of the way, but she wasn’t finished.  No, she figured, corruption does not hang in the air, Steven said it was a song, and he had the skills and equipment to back up that claim.  She might be confusing those quartz’s gems with some others she had seen that were similar, there’s only so much variety that can be found in a gem, after all.  She was overreacting and realized it, and now, could do her best to move past it.  The sun was rising and Bismuth and Steven needed to make sure they weren’t seen if they wanted to pull this off correctly.   
  
Bismuth began walking again, continuing up the trail that lead to the floating platforms in the sky.  She was getting closer, she could see.  Even in the night, she could make out Steven’s stocky silhouette.  He was an intimidating sight to be sure, even more so in the darkness.  The jaggedness of his father’s guitar and Nikki sticking out from his backpack made it look like he had extra limbs, or maybe some sort of deformity.  But the second silhouette was a bit more alarming.  It had to be Pearl, otherwise Steven would have engaged by now.  The closer she got, the more she could make out.  First the long face that met at a point.  She couldn’t call it a beak, beaks don’t have teeth, and this one very much did.  Closer still, she saw a thin, sheer material that stretched from her wrists down to her waist, almost like some kind of wingsuit.  This is probably how she was gliding around.  It was a wonder that Steven hadn’t been discovered yet.  She would soon find out.   
  
She finally reached the precipice and took the first leap.  Then immediately after, the second, and third.  She hopped from platform to platform until she was only one jump away and she froze.  There, on the island before her, stood Pearl.  Literally, Pearl was standing up straight, and she was frightening.  She stood twice Bismuth’s height, but her limbs were so thin and jagged, she was like some kind of flying, four legged spider with a pointed head.  The rain made all of her incredibly smooth limbs glisten, but the edges of them were extremely sharp.  She had no fingers, no toes, just long, sharp points.  And she was so pale, stark white, maybe even reflective if someone shined a light on her.  Bismuth was glad she was facing the other direction before she made a short leap to the last platform.  As soon as she touched the ground, however, Pearl spun around on one foot, like a compass making a perfect arc in a circle.  Bismuth almost backed up, but she saw Steven holding a finger to his lips, telling her to be as quiet as possible.  She quickly learned why.   
  
Pearl was inches away from her face, and Bismuth got a better look than she ever hoped to get.  Pearl’s gem.  Baroque and formed vaguely incorrectly with its oval in shape.  This was her, alright.  Her eye sockets were hollow, nothing in them but tar-colored darkness and rainwater that continued to fall.  Were they eye sockets?  Maybe they were nostrils, she didn’t know.  Judging by how Steven was gesturing, she assumed that Pearl could only hear, and soon she was proved correct.   
  
Pearl’s head quickly whipped up in the air, almost bruising Bismuth’s chin in the process.  She started moving around the platform with her insect-like appendages, not making a single sound as she did.  She quivered and seemed to vibrate with each step.  Bismuth could only assume it was because she was in horrendous pain.  She did her best to keep her tears, and the inevitable harsh breaths that would follow, from bubbling up.  She looked over at Steven who held up an open hand, his eyes trained on the disgustingly graceful pearl in front of them.  He was not crying, Bismuth observed.  The rain made it hard to tell, but his expression was stony.  Maybe he had seen this too many times before for it to affect him.  Maybe he was a heartless bastard.  She surmised it could be both.  But soon, Steven had brought his thumb in, displaying only four fingers.  He was counting down, he was about to act, and Bismuth needed to get ready.  She steadied her gaze on Pearl and waited.   
  
Three fingers were left extended.   
  
Then just two.   
  
One.   
  
“PEARL!”  Steven yelled, and Pearl whipped around, using all four limbs to skitter toward the boy.  Before she could make much headway, however, Bismuth sprang into action, tackling her from the side.  She quickly shapeshifted her legs to wrap around Pearl’s and shoved her feet deep into the dirt.  Without shapeshifting her arms, she had gotten Pearl into a full nelson hold.   
  
The pained scream that came from Pearl’s beak shaped appendage as she tried to thrash about was heart wrenching.   
  
Before Bismuth was able to yell for her partner to do whatever he was planning on doing, she heard a familiar rumble, an incredibly loud low A chord that reverberated through the entire battlefield.  But Bismuth remained unaffected, her form keeping its lucidity.   
  
Pearl, however, began to thrash even harder, her sharpened limbs digging into Bismuth’s legs and arms.   
  
“STEVEN!  HURRY IT UP!” she bellowed.  Not that it mattered, Steven couldn’t do much to speed the process up anyway.   
  
Pearl continued her high pitched screeching, clearly in absolute agony.  Finally though, her form was wavering, turning white and losing its shape.  A few minutes went by as Pearl remained in that state before Bismuth could finally release her without fear of her gliding away.  She stepped back from her former teammate and let Steven work his musical magic.  The chord he played had become lower still as it found the wavelength that was just right to resonate with Pearl’s form.  The screeching slowly came to a halt, the white light from the wavering gem had become extinguished and finally, all that was left on the floating platform was a pale, baroque pearl gemstone.   
  
Bismuth and Steven stared down at the lifeless thing, both holding themselves.  Bismuth was basically hugging herself, as she couldn’t believe what her friend had become, and Steven had crossed his arms, proud that they were able to take them down with such little effort.   
  
“That was her…  That was Pearl, that…  That thing.”  Bismuth wouldn’t break down, not in front of her enemy, she couldn’t, she wouldn’t let herself.   
  
“Yeah, Bismuth.  That’s Pearl.  But it’s gonna be okay.  We just gotta get back home.  I’m gonna heal her a little bit, put her to sleep with a lullaby, and I’m gonna get inside her head.  I know…  I know that doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.  But I can do this.  We’re gonna get through this one gem at a time.  Pearl is just the tip of the iceberg, okay?  I’d been watching her for months now, trying to find the right time to strike, and I knew I couldn’t do it on my own.  But we got her, Bismuth.  She’s gonna be okay.  Less than a day from now, if I can do everything right, we’ll have our Pearl back.”   
  
Bismuth had calmed, nodding her head in agreement.  “She better be back to normal, Steven.  If you can’t do this, there’s no reason for me to help you anymore.”   
  
“I know.”  Steven said, heaving a sigh.  “Sometime between now and tomorrow morning, someone’s life is going to change.  For better or for worse, well…  We’ll just have to wait and see.”


	4. The Four Horsemen

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know, I know, it's been a while. These chapters are proofread multiple times before they're posted here, and it didn't help that I got wrapped up in Wrestlemania pretty hardcore this year. But that's no excuse. Anyway, I'll cut the crap and get right to it, musical influences for this chapter were "Silver Lights" by Coconuts, "Icky Thump" by The White Stripes, "Miami" by Jasper Byrne, "Cherry Bomb" by The Runaways, "Superhuman" by CFO$, and as always, "BFG Division" by Mick Gordon. Enjoy!

Waving Hills Asylum for the Mentally Disturbed was founded in the early 1900's in northeastern Keystone, almost reaching into the Jersey border. The construction took place deep in the forest, and was completed in a little over five years. It was a decent asylum, as asylums go, but during the outbreak of tuberculosis in the 1930’s, however, it doubled as a hospital. One wing went to those who were suffering from the disease, the other went to the criminally insane who were too dangerous to transfer to another facility. Medical staff who were trained to deal with the disease were brought in, but the medicinal breakthroughs that were needed to save the afflicted hadn't happened yet, and still wouldn't for quite some time. 

Regardless, these events that occurred decades ago shaped the building into something nobody knew they needed until they found it. This asylum had been restructured, making it one-half prison, one-half hospital. It had a massive wall surrounding the place with a gate that was controlled via remote access from an adjacent guard post. The only other way in and out was a lightly guarded tunnel (which, during the outbreak, was used to haul the ever rising number of corpses out of the building) that could be blocked by simply storing various items and riff raff inside in an effort to block the path.

Hundreds of people perished within the walls of this colossal building that was meant to help people, ultimately achieving the opposite of what was intended. Some people believed it to be haunted by the spirits of those who felt cheated out of a chance at a normal life by this horrid place. That didn't seem to deter anyone, however. When the second wave of gem corruption hit, people found a safe haven in this monstrous construct. The ghosts inside had become less frightening than the very real monsters that had begun roaming the Earth.

Waving Hills became a safe haven for people from miles around. Word spread through the multiple gangs of survivors that it was the place to be, the place with the best hope for survival. The man who was responsible for this kind of reaction was Roger Patel, who was a multi-millionaire after founding Patel Soundworks. He kept the asylum up and running, housing every family who came to its heavily guarded doors (and blasting away any rogue gems with a very low frequency from a barrage of amplifiers set up around the perimeter) for a year and a half before he met an untimely demise at the hand of a corrupted agate that had made her way through the tunnel very quietly. She managed to kill nearly a quarter of the residence before Roger’s son had managed to take it down. His name? Kevin. Kevin Patel.

He was praised as a hero and immediately put in charge. Everyone was in agreement that it's what his father would have wanted. And after that show of bravery, the 28 year old heir to the Patel fortune deserved it. Or he would have, if he weren't the one who baited the agate into the tunnel and let it wreak havoc for a while before finally taking it down with a trap that he had set up hours beforehand.

For a year and a half, Kevin had been in charge of Waving Hills, and in that year and a half, he changed the quasi-socialist commune into a dictatorship that he was in charge of. His one law, while being purposefully vague, was enforced harshly, and that law simply stated “Do right by me, and I will do right by you.” Naturally, this tended to lead to a lot of personal issues being dealt with via brute force from his own secret police.

Kevin was not an unintelligent person by any means, he remembered everyone he knew from Beach City who had shown any modicum of strength. Whether that strength was intelligence, brute force, charisma, it didn't matter. He knew the people he wanted and he got them.

The first was Kiki Pizza. He knew about her athletic ability. Her consistent and lengthy runs she did every day were something he observed on a regular basis. She wasn't muscular, but she had enough endurance that he knew she would be a valuable asset. All it took was a small bribe to Kofi Pizza and Kiki was all his. This wasn't necessarily a bad thing for Kiki Pizza and her family, on the contrary. With Kiki being on the secret police, her family was sure to be taken care of better than anyone else. But it didn't mean she had to like it, even if she did enjoy her co-workers.

One such co-worker was Sadie Miller. Kevin had heard stories about how she took down some sort of invisible monster on an island somewhere in the Pacific. All for Lars, the rumors said. Since her mother had died in the first wave of attacks, Kevin figured he couldn't bribe Sadie into working for him, so he took a different route. Emotional manipulation was his specialty. All he had to do was put on an act. “Oh, Sadie, I'm so sorry that your mother died, let me know if you need some Kevin time to talk about it. By the way, I heard Lars is still alive down south somewhere, and if you join my security team, I'll let you make a plan to venture down there to find him.” Of course, he knew that day would never come. But he didn't have to tell Sadie that.

The third deputy he received actually showed up late to the party so to speak. One strange day, a mysterious woman with short pink hair on a motorcycle approached Waving Hills. She was almost shot on sight, but she was able to outdraw the guards with her revolver. Over the intercom, she had a very short job interview. “You give me food and water and I'll do shit for you.” Well, that was music to Kevin’s ears. For a few steak dinners every month, she even agreed to train the secret police in firearms.

Kevin’s final deputy was not difficult to get. The girl’s mother was a doctor, and her hippocratic oath made the asylum an optimal place to do some good for what was left of humanity. Priyanka was glad to have gotten her daughter away from that Universe boy before he turned into one of those _things._ Connie, however, was less than pleased. 

Before Steven and Connie got separated in the mass hysteria surrounding the second wave of corruption, Steven had told her that she was the best hope humanity had. She would have to help defend the weak and sick from all of the gems while Steven did his best to figure out how to reverse the awful things that happened. Well, now she was stuck guarding an asylum that belonged to a terrible person who was making everything worse. It ate at her. This isn't what was supposed to happen. This wasn't right. She had to fix it. And fix it she would.

It was slow going at first, convincing her fellow deputies to leave Raving Hills (the name had been changed in exchange for Sour Cream’s DJ prowess). Sadie held on hope for Kevin to come through on his promise to help get Lars back, and the pink haired biker chick (that Connie swore she had seen somewhere before) seemed content with scavenging bikes to bring back to the facility.

Kiki, on the other hand, was thrilled with the idea to run off. The two planned in secret for months before Connie finally showed Kiki Rose’s sword. At first, the younger girl thought Kiki would run, maybe tell the others, but soon she had enough questions to fill an entire encyclopedia (How do you have this? How did you smuggle it in? Doesn't this belong to that nonbinary person who fought those giant corruptions on the beach that one time?). It was a little overwhelming for Connie, but all was well once she gave Kiki a demonstration of her ability. She expected the Pizza girl to be impressed, but wasn't anticipating her wanting lessons.

Twice a week, in the middle of the night, Connie and Kiki sparred in the forest. They mainly used sticks for two reasons, the first being that they wouldn't hurt as much when either was struck by one, and the second being that swords weren't exactly commonplace.

Everything went rather smoothly until one night ended with applause from a third party. They breathed a sigh of relief when Sadie’s familiar voice echoed through the trees. She must have followed them after their guard shift ended. At first, the two sparring partners were afraid that Sadie was going to rat them out, but she soon expressed an interest in joining them, much to their excitement. There was one caveat, however; Sadie wanted to use a spear. Connie was happy to oblige.

The three of them kept a steady training regimen, both Kiki and Sadie were trained by Connie twice a week on different days. This was mostly to work around their guard shifts, but the youngest of the three preferred not having to train both of her students at the same time. She was great with a sword, but a spear required a bit more concentration. All she knew was what she gleaned from Pearl, and Sadie obviously couldn’t shoot any kind of magic bolts of lightning out of her sharpened stick.

The three of girls enjoyed each other’s company, often joking and reminiscing about the old days in Beach City. One day, Connie broached the subject of leaving Raving Hills with the other two, and both of them agreed that if they were in charge, they would run a much better safe haven than Kevin ever could. It would be run fairly and without discrimination or manipulation. A rather believable rumor had started going around as to what Kevin was doing to keep Sour Cream under his thumb. Nobody knew the exact specifics other than it involved Vidalia and some kind of disease. In any case, Kevin was a scumbag who shouldn’t be trusted. So the three of them became resolute in their want to leave this place behind and start anew somewhere else. The only problem, of course, was getting there.

The training pattern continued on for weeks, and it was very clearly draining Connie. She loved teaching and considered it vital that her friends know how to utilize proper melee combat techniques should they be attacked by any corruptions, but in between night shifts and scavenging missions that Kevin had been sending the four of his deputies on, it was really throwing her off her groove, and the endless rain that plagued everywhere they went didn’t help matters at all. She had begun to get careless due to her lack of sleep.

Every time Connie was sent on a mission, she brought with her a small collection of electronics that looked like a heap of junk. Little did they know, that junk heap was actually comprised of several different parts that, when put together, could be hooked up to a radio antenna and begin transmitting signals. She didn’t have the right parts for a decent enough microphone, but it was okay. She usually was accompanied on these scavenging missions by another deputy, and with increasing frequency, it was the pink haired girl who came along. Using a microphone to transmit any kind of message would be impractical, as it was difficult to nonchalantly insert the location of Raving Hills into a sentence without it seeming suspicious. So instead, she put together a small rig to transmit a single D note one octave above middle C. With this one note, this one single sine wave, she was able to broadcast her message across the tri-state area in Morse code; “STEVEN QUARTZ UNIVERSE STOP STAY NEAR BEACH CITY I WILL BE COMING SOON STOP LOVE JAM BUD”

Whenever she came across any kind of large antenna, all the way to ameteur HAM radio setups to college radio stations, that message would be sent out. She was going to find Steven, she knew he was alive somewhere out there, and they would be together again someday very soon.

It was somewhere near the Jersey border when events were finally set in motion to put “The Runaways” together. Connie was on a scavenging mission with Pink (who seemed okay with this nickname more than any other) in a town that she knew they had already been to. Pink told Connie to just do the best she could and that Kevin was probably just being extra careful. This, of course, was a lie. Pink was under very strict orders from Kevin. Wait for Connie to start broadcasting her signal, put her magnum to the back of her head, and pull the trigger.

To Pink’s credit, Kevin wanted to kill the poor girl outright, but Pink wanted proof of her wrongdoing before she took any action. Kevin, with his own radio, had been picking up the signals that Connie was sending out. Instantly recognizing it as Morse code, he got someone to translate it very quickly. When he worked out that someone was looking for Steven Universe, his mind immediately leapt to Connie Maheswaran. Those two were the brats who tried to beat him in that street race and almost made him commit a felony.

And that brings us to the present. Pink, the motorcycle-riding, badass punk-rock chick was holding her revolver to the back of Connie Mehaswaren’s head. And Connie felt it there, its stinging cold barrel aimed right at her visual cortex. If she survived the shot, she would be severely blinded, and that wasn’t ideal. She stopped moving, stopped breathing, stopped typing out the code. But when Pink spoke, it didn’t sound like the voice she expected her killer to have. It sounded broken up, remorseful even.

“Why’d you have to make me do this? I don’t go around murdering fuckin’ kids, and before you start yellin’ foul at me, yeah, you’re a fuckin’ kid, not even old enough to rent a car in the old world. I don’t want to do this, you know. But you’re ruining something great with these messages you’re sending out. I don’t know what you want with Steven, but there’s nothing we can do for him, so just let it go. If you see reason in this, maybe I don’t have to kill ya. Maybe I go tell Kev that you ain’t got nothin’ to do with any of this. Maybe we can all go home, put all this behind us.”

Connie, resuming her breathing, worked up the courage to speak. After all, it takes a lot of effort to talk when you’re seconds away from literally biting the bullet. “You call Raving Hills a home? A run down insane asylum with a dictator leading the cause? A dictator who’s more of an expert in fear mongering than getting any actual work done? He doesn’t know anything about the ‘monsters’ that everyone back there is so afraid of. They’re all still gems, Pink. Gems with feelings, with thoughts and emotions. Steven can help them if _we_ help _him,_ I know it.”

Pink cocked the hammer of her revolver back, seeing her efforts were futile. “Steven can’t do that, Connie. Reversing corruption has never been done by a normal gem before.”

“Steven is not a normal gem!” Connie shouted as she spun around and got Pink into an armbar, something that the deputy certainly was not expecting. She fired a shot that hit nothing important as the two of them fell onto the ground, Pink on her stomach and Connie onto Pink’s arm. The gun was being twisted around wildly before Connie wisely pinned Pink’s hand to the ground, rendering her unable to fire.

The pink haired girl let out pained screams as Connie worked her arm out of its socket. It all had happened so fast, the deputy barely had any time to register that she had been beaten by this much smaller girl. She continued thrashing about, and Connie bellowed, “Keep moving and I’ll break it so my mom can't fix it.”

Pink froze, knowing Connie was capable of doing what she just said. She let her body go limp, and Connie relented. She didn't allow her to stand, however. Connie took the handcuffs that Pink had on her belt and cuffed both of her hands behind her back. Then she stood and leaned against a nearby traffic light pole.

The tide had turned so quickly, Pink was so sure she had the upper hand with a gun to Connie’s head. But Connie was too swift and powerful with her hand to hand combat skills. It didn't matter much now, though. Connie was surely about to finish the job. Pink would tell Kevin about all of this as soon as she got back. Connie couldn't let that happen, not when she was so close to getting a group together to leave.

Pink made peace with her god as she heard the sound of a blade being unsheathed. Quickly, she rolled over and sat up. If she was going to die, she was going to face her killer. She was going to look her in the eyes as she breathed her last breath. That breath was _not,_ however, supposed to be a gasp. She couldn't help herself, though, when she found herself staring at Rose Quartz’s very own sword.

Connie held the blade out onto Pink’s shoulder. “I promise you, I'll make this quick. You won't feel anything, you'll just go. One second here, the next, gone. I’m sorry it came to this…”

Pink was crying now. Not for herself, no, but for the gem who showed her this sword so long ago. The gem who she loved and then lost when the corruption hit. The gem who showed her how much more to life there could be.

“Connie wait…” she said, softly, as Connie held the sword high above her head, ready to bring it down on her would-be victim.

The Maheswaran girl sighed, not wanting to drag this out. “Pink, don't make this harder than it has to-” she was cut off.

“Pearl… She trained you. Well, you and Steven, but it _was_ her… You're Connie. _The_ Connie. The one she always talked so highly of…”

Connie’s eyes were wide as saucers. How did Pink know that? The only person who knew she had any interaction with the Crystal Gems was her mother and father. But Pink saw the confused look on her face and laughed through her tears.

“My real name is Sheena…”

The sword dropped to the ground at about the same time Connie fell to her knees. A tense silence filled the wreckage that surrounded them. Confusion filled both of their heads, mostly about how this situation would be resolved now that new information had come to light. Sheena assumed she would still die, she knew how Pearl was during the war. She could only imagine how much of the “Terrifying Renegade Pearl” came through during Connie’s training. The Maheswaran girl was the one to speak first.

“Your hair looks different… I mean, I only saw you in pictures from the boardwalk photo booth that Pearl kept on the refrigerator in the beach house. Before I went off to college, she talked about you so much… She wasn't ready to introduce you to everyone yet, still wasn't by the time I left…”

Sheena stayed silent, attempting to figure out Connie’s endgame here. If she wasn't going to die, then what did Connie have in mind? Was she just going to keep talking? That question was answered when Connie went silent again, but Sheena didn't want to say anything. Not now, considering she almost killed her girlfriend's protege. But who was she kidding? She couldn't have killed Connie if she tried, not if she was trained by Pearl.

Connie once again broke the silence. “If you really are Sheena, and all evidence is currently pointing to that being the case, then you know about Steven. You know at most everything Pearl knew about him. So naturally, you don't know about the times he and I visited Jasper in his dreams.”

Sheena shifted uncomfortably at Jasper’s name. But Connie was right, she hadn't heard about anything like this. She stayed quiet and let the girl continue.

“He never told anybody he was doing this because he knew the gems wouldn't let him keep trying, but doing everything on his own wasn't an option either. He got really good at astral projection, and was able to enter Jasper’s subconscious. He brought me along that night, and together, we put her mind back together. It didn't happen all at once, but eventually she could talk to us. It was slow going, but eventually she let us unbubble her. When we did, and she reformed, she still looked corrupted, but behaved like a normal gem. She remembered herself, she remembered us, she kept it together. I underline that for you, _Steven was able to fix the mind of a corrupted gem._ And before the second wave hit, he had been texting me about using sound to reshape Jasper’s form.”

Sheena remained stone-faced, not sure what to make of this new information. “Okay… so why are you telling _me_ all of this? What does that have to do with you or me?”

Connie sighed and stood up, grabbing the sword as she did. But she didn't raise it, she just held it tightly in one hand. A show of force, a vulgar display of power to show Sheena that she had the upper hand without explicitly saying so.

“Steven came extremely close to fixing a corruption before everything got ruined. I know that he’s still alive, and I think you do too. If he were saving gems, the first one he would save is Pearl. Pearl was more of a mother to him than Rose Quartz could ever hope to be, he told me as much himself. In addition, continuing to be a part of Kevin’s secret police is morally reprehensible. We’ve all heard the screams that come from the east wing, and despite the rumors that Kevin has expertly started perpetuating, they aren’t ‘The ghosts of the tuberculosis patients who died that are now wandering the halls.’ What do you think happens to the people that we ‘arrest?’ It’s not like we just kick them out of the place, Kevin makes sure he gets whatever he can out of them. Fuck, do you even know what he’s doing to Vidalia to keep Sour Cream in line? We are resources for him to use, and he sees us as nothing more. Having said all of that, I know you're a reasonable woman. I know you know that I can't have you standing in the way of the reversing of the extinction of all gems on Earth. So I'm offering you a very, very good deal that I think you should take. You can either die here, in the rain, by the sword that belonged to your girlfriend’s ex, or you can go with option B.”

Sheena sat there in the rain for a moment, waiting for Connie to finish. When she didn’t, Shenna took it upon herself to inquire further.

“What’s option B?”

Connie breathed out a quick sigh as she walked over to the bike where her bag was and stowed the sword away, breaking eye contact with Sheena. She explained during the process.

“Option B is joining up with myself, Sadie, and Kiki. The three of us don’t want to stay at Raving Hills until Kevin decides we’re all too dangerous and his ‘citizens’ turn into slaves. Stars, Sheena, he calls us his secret police, how much more proof do you need that this is going to get ugly?”

She zipped up her green duffel bag after making sure her sword was secure and lit up a cigarette that she had pulled from a pack of Persian-brand menthols. It took some effort, considering the rain, but she eventually managed to keep the fire going.

“If you come with us, you get to help start a better tomorrow. But more importantly to you, you get to see Pearl again. And depending on how busy Steven has been, maybe even more of the gems. On top of that, you won’t have to worry about food, injury, probably electricity, or being left to die by your comrades. See, if you help us out by giving us three of the bikes you made, we can all get the hell outta dodge while the gettin’ is good. We’ll be free. Gems don’t operate on any sort of hierarchy, not on Earth anyway. No gods, no kings, only us. Shit, once we get to Beach City and find Steven, you don’t even have to stick around with us. You and Pearl can fuck off to somewhere tropical and do the domestic thing til the day you die if that’s your purview. If you haven’t realized it, I’m basically offering you paradise, a chance to start a new hold out for humanity, or an opportunity to do much less work for a lot more payoff. It’s an offer that’s too good to refuse. I know it, because I already put my sword away, and you know it because you’ve had the lock for those handcuffs picked by the time I said ‘Option B’ and haven’t reached for your gun yet.”

Sheena’s eyes went wide for a second before she sighed and put both her hands in her lap, the handcuffs hanging off of one of her wrists. Connie laughed as she let the smoke out of her lungs, and Sheena got defensive.

“I didn’t have to pick them, you know, you didn’t take the key off of my belt!” she protested.

“I didn’t have to, if you didn’t tell me your name, you would be dead by now.”

Sheena couldn’t argue with that logic. Connie was right. She was being offered the whole world on a silver platter and all she had to do was give up three of her bikes. Nothing was keeping her loyal to Kevin except for food, shelter, and protection from whatever fresh hell might come for them all next. Of course, Sheena wasn’t one to just trust someone she barely knew, but this was Connie Maheswaran. Steven Universe’s girlfriend, Pearl’s protege, possible future leader of the free world, and here Sheena was, able to get in on the ground floor.

Connie took a long drag from her cigarette while Sheena was thinking things over. She knew Sheena was going to take her up on the offer, she was really just racking her brain on what to call the four of them now. “The Four Horsewomen” sounded cool, but it just didn’t roll off the tongue quite so well. “The Runaways,” though, that had a nice ring to it.

Connie was able to finish an entire cigarette in silence before Sheena spoke up finally. Just as Connie started kissing ash, Sheena got to her feet.

“I’ll do it. Shit, I know, I should sound pleased, but we did almost murder one another.”

Connie raised an eyebrow and gave a smirk.

“Aright, alright,” Sheena relented, “I almost got murdered by you, happy? Christ, kid, I’m good with guns, not so good with whatever martial-arts mumbo jumbo you came at me with.”

“We’re gonna fix that straight away, Sheena. Kiki and Sadie both know how to use a sword and staff respectively, we gotta find your niche.”

Sheena tilted her neck to the left and right, the cracking noise it made echoing outward, overpowering the pitter patter of the rain on the asphalt under their feet.

“Brass knuckles count as weapons? I’d much prefer learning how you were able to go from having a gun to the back of your head to having me on the ground getting my arm worked out of its socket.”

“In time,” Connie said, getting onto the bike that Sheena had refurbished for Kevin’s secret police. “I can teach you some basics, maybe a little more. But Pearl is gonna have a field day teaching the three of you once we find the remnants of the Crystal Gems.”

Sheena merely nodded in agreement. “So, once we get back, what’s the plan? We can’t just pack up and leave, they’ll try to stop us. I don’t exactly hate anybody at Raving Hills, so I’d rather not have to kill anybody.”

“We won’t have to,” Connie uttered, pulling a pair of goggles over her eyes. “We’re going to wait until everyone else is asleep, just the night watch is awake. The night watch tonight is, of course, Kiki and Sadie. We’ll meet up with them, tell them to say their goodbyes to everyone who can keep a secret, then we pack up, saddle up, and ride off into the sunrise. Anybody who _does_ try to get in our way, they get their arm broken and their nose pushed right back into their face. Any questions?”

Sheena shook her head and got her bike started. Connie did the same, and as a loud clap of thunder echoed through the darkened skies above, the secret police had officially ended and The Runaways began.

OoOoOoOoOoOoOoO

 

Loud sirens were blaring at the barn courtesy of Peridot. It had been nearly three weeks since Bismuth and Steven had returned from the Strawberry Battlefield with Pearl’s gem in tow. Steven had done his best to cure Pearl of her corruption, but to Bismuth, it didn’t look like he was doing a whole lot. This was understandable if someone didn’t know what exactly corruption and its cure entailed, however. Steven did his best to keep the peace, but after Pearl had been spent two entire weeks in her gem, Bismuth had gotten impatient. She attacked Steven while his guitar was out of reach, leaving a rather large gash on his head right below his right eye. The fight was going on for near an hour, and Peridot helped in the only way she was able. Whether or not her help actually aided anybody was debatable, but there wasn’t much else she could do.

Bismuth retained the upper hand throughout the fight. She managed to keep Steven from reaching his instrument the whole time and he ended up in a compromising position. Bismuth had him pinned up against the barn wall by his neck, her shapeshifted arms taking on the form that one could only describe as wrench-like in shape. Every breath Steven took was haggard, taken with great difficulty. She made sure he got just enough air to keep him alive.

“It’s been THREE WEEKS, Steven! You said you could cure her, you said you could save her, but she hasn’t reformed since we let her out of the bubble! And why would she?! All you’ve been doing is sleeping! Every day, every night, nothing but sleep, sleep, and more sleep! That’s not how you save a gem, you poor excuse for a Crystal Gem!”

Bismuth’s sentence was punctuated by a flash of lightning and a loud clap of thunder. Steven did his best to talk, but all that came out was a hoarse whisper.

“What do you… know… about curing… corruption…?” It was a question and an insult, telling Bismuth she had no idea what he was doing while he slept. She didn’t know that every night, he drifted into Pearl’s mind, wandering through mazes of non-euclidian geometry, trying to put things back together that seemed impossibly broken. He _talked_ to Pearl in his dreams, got her back to her normal self, and when her mind was finally back to normal, he and Peridot played just the right frequencies to alter her gemstone to produce her usual form. It wasn’t perfect, but it was the best he could do.

“I know that it’s more than just NAP TIME, you little worm!” Her grip tightened around his throat as another flash lit the barn. She was ready to snap his neck, it would be over quickly and she could finally rest knowing that Rose Quartz was no more. The gem that kept her hidden away in a bubble for millennia, the gem that didn’t understand how Homeworld worked or how useful the Breaking Point could be, the gem who had no idea what it meant to be a leader, she would be gone from this world once and for all. Steven’s eyes were bloodshot, tears biting the corners of them, and his face was as red as a cherry tomato. No more air was entering Steven Universe’s lungs. No matter. As soon as either his neck was broken or he had suffocated, Bismuth would scoop out his gem and shatter it under her foot. It hardly mattered how he felt if that was going to be his fate within the next few minutes.

Unfortunately for Bismuth (and very fortunately for Steven), she was not paying attention to Earth’s weather at that moment. She could hardly be blamed for that, it was a rather intense moment after all, and weather was pretty simple to understand regardless. She knew it rained, she knew sometimes it snowed. She knew that lately, it was nothing _but_ rain and that was odd. She knew that sometimes the wind would be so strong that it would level entire cities. She also knew about thunder and lightning, but she seemed to either overlook or not notice the fact that when there was lightning, there was always a boom of thunder very close behind. Were she paying attention to that, she may have questioned when there was no thunder. She may have asked herself what that flash could have been if not lightning?

 

But she didn’t ask herself that question. She didn’t notice the meteorological issues that had just occurred, and she wouldn’t realize it until she felt some very familiar handiwork being pressed against her back. A trident, specifically, that was beginning to pierce her form. Her grip slackened and she breathed in a sharp inhale, realizing in that moment that the lightning that just happened wasn’t lightning at all, no, but it was in fact a gem reforming in its nest of blankets that Steven had so lovingly created.

Slowly, Bismuth turned her head, her eyes looking downward from her right shoulder. Before she could take in the sight that greeted her, the would-be assailant had some very important words that Bismuth needed to hear;

**“Get your hands off of my baby or I am going to break you…”**


	5. Welcome Home

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's back. I know, it's been forever, but since April, I've moved to Maine and tried to kick xanax. I'm down to two pills a night, slowly getting there. I could bore you all day with excuses, but I know they won't matter much. I would, however, like to apologize for the both the cliffhanger and the lengthy hiatus that followed. To those of you who have been waiting patiently, I plan to continue this. I also have another story that I needed to write called Coming of Age, it's about Steven being trans (somebody told me "all gems are female" and it got me thinking, and being trans myself, it helped quite a bit) so if you wanna check that out, feel free. Musical inspirations for this chapter are "Witches" by Candlemass, "Love Dump" by Static-X, "Stigmata" by Ministry, "The Hand That Feeds" by Nine Inch Nails, "Axolotl" by The Veils, "Snake Eyes" by Trouble, "Holiday" by The Scorpions, "Modern Girl" by Sleater-Kinney, and as always, "BFG Division" by Mick Gordon. Enjoy, sorry for the wait.

Time stood still as Bismuth took in what was happening around her. In her head, she was slowly putting together just how wrong she turned out to be. Steven kept his promise, which meant he could live to fight another day. But because he had kept his promise, she had made another enemy. If they were to fight to the death when this was over, then Steven was going to have quite a few powerful allies in his corner. After all, Steven told the gems what Bismuth was planning with the Breaking Point and they didn't unbubble her back then. If he didn’t, then why would Pearl, one of her biggest allies and best friends, be shoving a trident into Bismuth’s back?

Unfortunately time had not actually stopped while Bismuth processed all of this, and she became painfully aware of two things; Steven was beginning to fade out of consciousness and Pearl’s spear had begun to dig further into her spine. In one swift movement, Bismuth dropped Steven to the ground against the wall and stepped aside to allow Pearl to tend to her godson. She did her best to give them both space, and took a seat on the ground on the other side of the barn.

Pearl let go of her spear, making it drop. Before it could hit the ground, however, she threw herself at Steven’s barely conscious body, hugged him tightly, and burst into tears. Her tough façade faded instantaneously, she didn't care if Bismuth saw her being weak in this moment, she just wanted to hold her baby again.

“Oh Steven, I'm so sorry I hurt you all those times, I know I wasn't myself but I still wish I never did it, please forgive me, I just acted on instinct, you know how much I love you, I would never do anything to hurt you on purpose, please don't even think that, Steven, I love you so much more than I can express, even more than-” she was cut off by Steven giggling.

“Pearl, it’s okay…” he took a moment to cough, his throat still sore from the vice grip that Bismuth had put on it. “That wasn't you back there… If you can forgive me for having Bismuth tackle you, then I can forgive you for everything you did while your mind wasn’t all there.”

Pearl hugged him even tighter, and while it hurt him immensely, he didn't care. He just hugged her back and fought back tears of his own.

“I… I really missed you, you know…” Steven spoke slowly to keep his voice from catching.

“Oh honey, I missed you too. So, so much. I thought that I might never be able to hold you in my arms again… But I'm here now, everything is going to be okay, Steven...”

_Everything is going to be okay, Steven._ The sentence wormed its way through Bismuth’s head, eating at her. Everything was most certainly _not_ okay. Pearl had come back from what was, until very recently, a fate considered worse than death. And she didn’t even want to give Bismuth the time of day. She stared at the two of them, holding one another, crying against the wall, and she felt almost envious.

In her head, she was reliving moments from the past where she and Pearl were the best of friends during the best of times. They were both in their element and in their prime, able to take down entire fleets of nephrite ships on their own. She remembered celebrating afterward, cheering loudly with Pearl, throwing her in the air and catching her in a hug when she came down. They loved each other as though they were sisters. And it was all ruined by this little sack of meat and leather with Rose Quartz’s gem on his belly. 

It wasn’t fair. None of this was fair. She wanted answers to everything, how did Pearl come back from that? Why was Steven asleep for weeks? If it involved curing corruption, why didn’t Steven just tell Bismuth? Well, the last one, she figured, she could surmise the answer;

Steven and Bismuth weren’t allies, not in the traditional sense of the word. When things got back to some semblance of normalcy, one of them was going to have to die. It would be a fight to the death that would be remembered for millennia to come, the gem who started the war for Earth against the gem who wanted desperately to end it by any means necessary. As soon as the fight was agreed upon, Bismuth was already strategizing in her head. Observe Steven, figure out what he can do, and exploit any weaknesses he shows. She didn’t take into account the fact that he might be smart enough to do something similar.

It hit her like a brick when she finally figured it out; Whatever Steven was doing to help Pearl, he didn’t want Bismuth to know. Likely because it would give him an advantage later on down the road. Naturally, she began devising a plan to find out _exactly_ what he was doing. She was going to make sure that he didn’t have any surprises up his sleeve.

 

OoOoOoOoOoOoOoO

 

After a good half hour of hugging and crying, Steven and Pearl finally separated (though Steven had to promise Pearl that he wouldn’t wander too far). Bismuth remained in the darkened corner, watching silently as lightning outside occasionally lit up her face. She made eye contact with Pearl, eye contact that at first was mistaken for anger from Bismuth, but Pearl soon realized it was hurt. And she understood why the hurt was there. It’s not easy to learn that your best friend agreed with the idea that you should be bubbled for an indefinite period of time after learning about your plans to end the war against Homeworld once and for all.

Pearl gave a reluctant smile to Bismuth and a small wave. Bismuth instantly looked offended and turned away, facing the wall. _Oh well…_ Pearl thought, _it was worth a try._

When Steven returned, he was dragging behind him the blackboard that was used long ago to keep score when Peridot and Pearl were having their robotics competition. Its wheels had rusted to the point where they barely moved, but Steven was determined to go about everything the right way this time. He turned the chalkboard to face both Pearl and Bismuth and had begun writing several names with a piece of chalk that was almost worn down to the nub. The names were as follows:

**Peridot**

**Bismuth**

**Pearl**

**Amethyst**

**Jasper**

**Garnet**

**Lapis Lazuli**

**Blue Diamond**

Though everyone was paying attention, both Pearl and Bismuth looked a little uneasy with the inclusion of the last name on the list. The question that was burning a hole into their brains was obvious; What did all of these gems have in common? Steven, however, had the answer at hand. Using a yardstick, he pointed at the first name on the list and began his lesson.

“Alright you two, I know this is all rather confusing and that neither of you know just what we’re doing. I plan to clear up any of that confusion right now. So to start, we have Peridot. Pearl, as you probably understand, you were corrupted. So was every other gem on the planet. The only two exceptions as far as I know are myself and Peridot. I saved her with my bubble, but we ran into a few uhm… Issues, I guess. She was poofed a couple of times. And all of a sudden, it started taking longer and longer for her to come back from her gem. Finally, after waiting months and months, she just wasn’t going to come back out. So I put her gem into a laptop’s motherboard. From there, she showed me what I needed to do in order to make her situation more comfortable. And now she’s everywhere around us at this very moment.”

Pearl raised her hand, which was an odd sight for Steven to see. It seemed even more offbeat when he was forced to call on her.

“Uhm… Yeah Pearl?”

Pearl seemed apprehensive. “What exactly do you mean she’s ‘everywhere around us at this very moment?’”

Almost as though Pearl had said some magic words, the various monitors around the barn all lit up with a green triangle. Pearl jumped, being slightly startled by the sudden lime glow that covered everything. Steven giggled to himself. Bismuth sat stone faced.

“I think that answers your question, Pearl,” the young man responded. “Moving on,” he began again, pointing the yardstick at the next name on the list, “Pearl. When Peridot was still able to hold her form, both of us scouted everywhere we could for all the gems on the list here with the exception of both Bismuth and Blue Diamond. We’ll get to that. Anyway, we found you in the Strawberry Battlefield, but we had no idea what we were doing… I didn’t figure out how to use soundwaves to alter gem forms until much later. And even after I had a decent sound system that worked with gem magic, I wasn’t strong enough on my own to come for you. Quartzes were roaming the area, amethysts, carnelians, jaspers, everything. I needed more muscle for that. That’s where Bismuth came in.”

He repositioned his yardstick over Bismuth’s name.

“I turned to Bismuth after realizing I had no other options. I lack the technical prowess to bring Peridot back to any sort of functional form. Sure, the computer thing seemed to work well enough, but a Peridot laptop could only help so much out in the field. What with the rain and all, it didn’t seem like the best idea. Peridot understood and actually suggested that I use Bismuth, and at first, I shot it down. I thought ‘There’s no way she’d help me, she’ll just want to murder me.’ As it turns out, I was only right about one of those things.”

Bismuth remained unperturbed, but Pearl turned her head and began glaring at the larger gray gem, staring daggers into her former teammate. Steven noticed almost immediately and let out a nervous laugh before continuing. He wanted to make sure Pearl didn’t fly off the handle and ruin the already strained alliance he had with Bismuth.

“Okay so moving on!”

The yardstick was moved onto Pearl’s name.

“With Bismuth’s help, I came back to the Strawberry Battlefield and… Well to be completely honest, we laid waste to the quartzes that were there. Their bubbles are all floating safely up in the loft right now. That was… Man, that was incredible. I used my club, Bismuth shapeshifted everything, we beat the everliving shhhhhhhh- I mean, uhm, crap. We beat the everliving crap out of them. It was so awesome, Pearl, you should have been there! Oh wait… I guess you kinda were…?”

Bismuth finally cracked a smile. Partially due to seeing Steven gush over their newest exploit together and also because Steven had to stop himself from swearing in front of Pearl. As quick as her smile came, however, it faded away. She couldn’t let herself get comfortable here. She especially couldn’t let herself grow fond of Steven in any capacity. They shared an enemy now, but when that enemy was dealt with properly, that alliance would sever. It had to. Bismuth wasn’t one to just let go of her convictions. She clung to them, even if it meant she got hurt in the process.

“So Pearl, after dealing with the quartzes, we came for you. Long story short, Bismuth tackled you, we poofed you, brought you back here, and then I cured your corruption. And now, you’re caught up to where Bismuth is. And now, for both of your benefits, it’s time to go over the rest of the plan.”

Bismuth raised an eyebrow and had changed how she sat, resting one ankle on the opposite leg’s knee. Pearl, however, was sitting like an attentive student. It was almost adorable enough to make Steven coo, but there were bigger matters to attend to. He moved the yardstick to the next name.

“Amethyst. As far as I know, she’s in the Prime Kindergarten. The few times I visited, I only saw the one purple quartz corruption there, and to be quite honest, I have no idea why she would be anywhere else. She’s really big though, like bigger than I would have expected considering the size Peridot says she was supposed to be. Still, considering how large her fusion with Garnet always is, I shouldn’t be too surprised. In any case, I haven’t actually been able to see her gemstone. She’s covered in too much fur, so just be careful when we try to take her down.”

Pearl raised her hand and Steven stifled a laugh. “Uh, Pearl, you can just ask questions. This is more of an open discussion, not a lecture.”

She sheepishly put her hand back down. “Oh… Yes, well… In any case, I wanted to ask why we’re going for Amethyst first. No offense to her, but Garnet was our leader for a very long time. She has future vision, a valuable asset to our efforts. So why not her?”

Steven slapped the yardstick into his other hand. “Garnet was my first thought too, Pearl, for much the same reasons. I wanted to keep this whole thing moving as quickly as possible. But because Garnet has future vision, she always seems to be one step ahead of me. The short answer is that I simply don’t know where she is or where she could even be. But at this point, it’s also because I made a promise to Peridot…”

Around the gems, the screens had begun to flash yet again. Two words, familiar to Steven, flashed on the monitors.

“AMETHYST FIRST”

Steven let out a sad chuckle. “I guess you could say someone here is missing her a bit more than the rest of us…”

Pearl frowned at the sentiment. “Oh Peridot… You poor thing, I hadn’t even begun to imagine what this must be doing to you…”

Peridot didn’t respond, but this interaction was enough to spark a bit of creativity in Pearl’s head. She would bring it up with Steven at the end of the discussion.

Steven readjusted the yardstick so it was back on the blackboard.

“After Amethyst, we have Jasper. I got very close to healing her corruption before White Diamond made her final strike on the Earth. Jasper was able to respond to me through physical means. Usually things like stomping a foot on the ground or a soft headbutt. She was responsive and actually seemed to want my help this time… So assuming the second wave of corruption didn’t ruin all that progress, she’s the best bet if we can find her. Considering we have no leads on Garnet and Lapis and Blue Diamond are much too powerful to go after with just the three of us, Jasper is going to be a great asset to us. Speaking of Garnet-”

Steven moved his yardstick yet again, this time onto Garnet’s name.

“She’s the next one on the list. Again, no leads on where she could be, so I was hoping that both Amethyst and you, Pearl, would be able to help me out on that front. Not yet, though, even if we knew where she was, Jasper is probably going to be integral to taking her down if she’s still fused.”

The yardstick moved again.

“Lapis Lazuli. This one is tricky… I know exactly where she is. Anyone who lives on the coast knows where she is. You may have noticed, Bismuth, that since you’ve been here, it hasn’t stopped raining. Just constant, steady rain, steady thunderstorms. Well, you can thank Lapis Lazuli for that. In her corrupted state, her powers are going off the hook. As far as I know, all over the world, on every continent, it hasn’t stopped raining or snowing since the corruption hit. What’s more, if you try to venture into the oceans, all you’ll find is mist. It’s pretty clear she’s somewhere in the Atlantic. Follow the mist, find Lapis. But considering she has control over the entire planet’s oceans, it’s going to be the second hardest fight we have to go through. And I know what you’re thinking; what’s the first? Well about that…”

He moved the yardstick to the final name on the board; Blue Diamond. Steven took a deep breath before continuing.

“I saw Blue Diamond. I saw her creeping out from behind a mountain. Yes, a mountain. It was only a few feet taller than her. The corruption made her grow, and when I saw her face, I also saw it made her decay…” The look on Steven’s face was difficult to interpret. If anything, it was a mix of fear and sadness. “She’s chilling to look at, and making eye contact blinded me briefly with my own tears. To summarize, Blue Diamond is a colossus. She’s a titan. She’s literally the size of a mountain and is currently roaming the Earth. Sometimes you can feel her nearby. If you’re here and you feel the ground rumbling, run as fast as you can to wherever you think is the safest place to be. I have no plan to take her down, I simply have no clue what her abilities are. We’re going to need everybody if we hope to even poof her. As for curing her, well… I’m at a loss there too. I’m afraid to bring any gem into a dream with me, especially into a diamond’s dream. I would hate to have any of you get corrupted again… But we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. For now, we’ve got a lot of work to do and I think it would be best if we got a start on it as soon as possible.”

With that last word, he put the yardstick down on the chalk tray that was attached to the blackboard.

“Any questions?”

Bismuth spoke up, letting out a quick breathy whistle beforehand. “You expect us to take down a diamond? A corrupted diamond that, according to your own testimony, is literally the size of a mountain?”

Steven crossed his arms in front of his chest. “It’s not like we can just let her roam the countryside, destroying anything she sees or accidentally steps on. Besides…”

He turned away and stared out of a nearby window at the downpour outside.

“...She was suffering. Badly. I could see it in how she moved, how she carried herself… This was more than corruption, this was also an immense amount of grief. She’s wandering aimlessly hoping for somebody to help her, but the corruption is making it impossible for her to get that help.”

Bismuth scoffed. “Steven, she was a tyrant. If she’s sad, it’s because she’s remembering all the horrible things she did. Do you think that’s a good enough reason to want to help her?”

Steven clenched his fists. “No, that’s why we _have_ to help her. She didn’t want any of this, Bismuth. You just don’t understand… You weren’t there.”

At this, Bismuth became outraged. “Oh, right, yeah, I wasn’t there. Sorry about that, I was too busy being _unconscious in a bright pink bubble!_ Of course I don’t understand your plan, you wouldn’t even do me the courtesy of trying to understand _mine!_ ”

She punctuated her last sentence by stomping the ground. Almost immediately, Pearl was at Steven’s side, trident pointed directly at the larger gem.

Steven let out a lengthy sigh. “Pearl, please. Sit down, I’ll be okay.”

“But Steven!” she protested, “I don’t trust her! She tried to kill you before, she could do it again at a moment’s notice!”

Steven put his hands on Pearl’s shoulders and looked at her affectionately. “Pearl, I was able to handle myself then. I’ve only gotten stronger since then. I’ll be okay, I promise. Besides, she won’t touch me until all her friends are better.”

Bismuth stared incredulously. “ _My_ friends? Are you serious right now? As soon as you put me back in that bubble, they stopped being _my_ friends. That’s what you do, isn’t it? You take anybody who’ll follow your weird, pacifist doctrine and you turn them against anybody who loved them! You turned Pearl against _me_ and when you save Garnet, she’ll hate me just as much!”

Her large, gray hands were clutching her head and tears were forming in her eyes, but she did her best to stop them from spilling over. Pearl had lowered her trident in bewilderment, and Steven looked at her with pity. He approached her, but Bismuth saw him and backed away, refusing his open, extended hand.

“No. No, I’m not gonna let you help me out of pity. I am tough. I am strong. Too strong to let some flesh sack like you pity me. No, I’m not sticking around. You and Pearl get reacquainted. I’m gonna handle that amethyst myself…”

Steven spoke out, “No, Bismuth, you can’t get there on foot, you need to-” but before he could finish, she was gone. Tears stung at his own eyes. They might have to fight each other in the future, but he didn’t want to hurt her like this. Not emotionally. Luckily, Pearl was there for the whole thing and she felt just as bad.

“Steven, I’m sorry… I never meant for this to happen.”

Steven held up a hand to silence his godmother. “It’s okay, Pearl. It’s not your fault… She’s learning that the people she loves no longer care for what she’s become.” He let out a deep sigh as he embraced the slender gem. “But it’s not too late to change her mind. I don’t think I can do it though… It’s going to be up to some other gems. Maybe starting off with a certain pearl she knew during the war…?”

Pearl’s eyes shot open as she pushed away enough to make eye contact with Steven. “Excuse me, Steven? Are you saying you want me to try and change _her_ mind?”

Steven sheepishly nodded. But Pearl still looked bewildered.

“Steven, she’s set in her ways! I could never change her mind like you want me to!”

“Pearl, please… It’s not like I would fare any better, let’s be honest. Look, you know her a lot better than I do… You fought together in the war, she doesn’t have a vendetta against you, it’s against my mom and, by extension, me…”

Steven looked down at his feet, his face the perfect picture of regret and sadness. Pearl gave him another hug as quick as she could. Not once in her life was she able to resist those puppy dog eyes. So much did she wish she were able to take Steven away from all this destruction and horror that surrounded them, stars know he deserves so much better. But contrary to Jasper’s steadfastly held belief, nobody ever really gets what they deserve.

Steven sighed contentedly in Pearl’s arms before talking again.

“Besides, the van is broken down and the destination warp pad in Prime is shattered. I can’t make that journey on foot and Bismuth can’t go out there alone…”

Pearl let go of Steven, chuckling to herself as she wiped her own tear-stained eyes. “I guess I’m going to have to go with her anyway…”

Steven let out a small laugh. “Yep. Looks that way. Better get going, don’t wanna lose her. I’m trusting you to bring back Amethyst, okay? I don’t know how overboard Bismuth could go, you know her much better than I do. But if you can’t take Amethyst between the two of you, please, just come back in one peace. Your safety is more important than anything.”

Pearl solemnly nodded, then put on a smile as she ruffled Steven’s hair, having to reach up to do so due to their height difference.

Pearl put away her spear and headed outside into the pour. Lightning flashed as she paused in the doorway. She quickly turned around.

“Steven…!” She called out to him, timidly.

Steven looked over and raised an eyebrow.

“...Promise me you’ll be here when I come back…?”

Steven felt his heart swell as he nodded in response. Pearl sighed contentedly before marching off into the thunder and rain.

 

OoOoOoOoOoOoO

 

A few hours had passed, Steven dividing his time between practicing his guitar and re-chaining his club. Every so often, he would immerse himself in the feeling of Pearl finally being home. The closest thing he ever had to a mother was back in his life. Sure, he had to send her off to war, but she would come back in one piece. He knew this beyond a shadow of a doubt. Pearl could take care of herself better than Steven could, and he was well aware of that. She might even be tougher than Bismuth.

He chuckled, briefly, thinking of how he’d have to curb his crude language around her. Things were slowly but surely changing back to normal. He had finally gotten things started and he felt he deserved a small break, a small change of pace. Fate, however, had other plans in store for the Universe boy.

“STEVEN”

The monitors around him began flashing his name and their connected speakers let out small beeps to get his attention.

“Peridot, calm down, I’m right here. What’s wrong?”

The beeping stopped, but soon resumed with a different rhythmic pattern.

“HEAR THESE?”

Steven listened for a moment before nodding.

“Yeah, it’s a bit loud…”

Peridot lowered the volume, but continued the beeps, which seemed to loop.

“CODE”

Steven raised an eyebrow. “What do you mean CODE? You’re just beeping at me.”

“RADIO WAVES”

“BEEPING”

“DECODED”

Steven was beginning to pick up on what Peridot was trying to say.

“It’s a code? The radio waves and the beeping, it’s all a code?”

Peridot’s monitors began blinking rapidly, showing the word “YES” on their screens.

“What does it say?!” Steven excitedly yelled. Peridot’s screens went blank, but the beeping continued. When it looped back to the beginning, Peridot began to translate, one word at a time.

**“STEVEN**  
QUARTZ  
UNIVERSE  
STOP  
STAY  
NEAR  
BEACH  
CITY  
I  
WILL  
BE  
COMING  
SOON  
STOP  
LOVE  
JAM  
BUD” 

Steven dropped his guitar and backed himself into a wall, his hand covering his mouth. This couldn’t be real, everything was going so wrong just days before, this couldn’t be real, could it? Then again, the only people who knew about the term “Jam Bud” were himself, Pearl, and…

“Connie…”


End file.
